Word.ws English Dictionary

poobah

/ˈpuːbɑː/

poobah noun: a person who holds multiple offices or positions of power at the same time.

Noun

poobah (plural poobahs)

  1. A person who holds multiple offices or positions of power at the same time.
  2. A leader or other important person.
    • ‘I said pooh-pooh,’ Duxmann Pooh Bah said.1982, Paul Radley, My Blue-Checker Corker and Me, Sydney: Fontana/Collins, page 112
  3. A pompous, self-important person.

Forms of poobah

pluralpoobahs
alternative formpooh bah
alternative formpooh-bah
alternative formpoo bah
alternative formpoo-bah
alternative formPoo-Bah
alternative formPooh-Bah

Origin of poobah

From Pooh-Bah, a comic character in the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta The Mikado (1885), formed as pooh + bah, both expressing contempt. The character of W. S. Gilbert's libretto is preceded by the character Pish-Tush-Pooh-Bah (described as “haughty”) in “King Borriah Bungalee Boo” (1866), one of the Bab Ballads, with pish and tush being two other terms of contempt.

Words formed from poobah

Questions about poobah

What does poobah mean?
Poobah means a person who holds multiple offices or positions of power at the same time.
What part of speech is poobah?
Poobah is a noun.
How do you pronounce poobah?
Poobah is pronounced /ˈpuːbɑː/.
What is the plural of poobah?
The plural of poobah is poobahs.

Words near poobah in the dictionary

  1. poo-poo
  2. poo-pooed
  3. poo-pooing
  4. poo-poos
  5. poo-uli
  6. poobah
  7. poobahs
  8. pooch
  9. pooch out
  10. pooched
  11. pooches

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: poobah (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-poobah.ogg, en-au-poobah.ogg.

Cite this entry: “poobah.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/poobah. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.