Word.ws English Dictionary

sinecure

/ˈsaɪ.nɪˌkjʊə/US/ˈsaɪ.nəˌkjʊɹ/

sinecure noun: a position that requires little to no work, or easy work, but still gives an ample payment; a cushy job.

Noun

sinecure (plural sinecures)

  1. A position that requires little to no work, or easy work, but still gives an ample payment; a cushy job.
    • Miss Briggs was not formally dismissed, but her place as companion was a sinecure and a derision […]1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 14, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC
    • A lucrative sinecure in the Excise was bestowed on Ferguson.1851, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter XI, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume III, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC, page 35
  2. (historical) An ecclesiastical benefice without the care of souls.

Adjective

sinecure (not comparable)

  1. Requiring no work for an ample reward.
    • By the act of union (1800), the offices of Irish secretary, a sinecure post, and lord lieutenant's secretary were combined.2006, Desmond Keenan, Post-Famine Ireland: Social Structure: Ireland as It Really Was, page 184
  2. Having the appearance of functionality without being of any actual use or purpose.
    • The old man hastily pulled down his spectacles from their sinecure office on his forehead, and looked at her with an expression of most angry amazement.1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter VII, in Romance and Reality. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 157

Verb

sinecure (third-person singular simple present sinecures, present participle sinecuring, simple past and past participle sinecured)

  1. (transitive) To put or place in a sinecure.

sinecure meaning in Malayalam

sinecure in Malayalam

easy job, soft option, cushy number
വേലയില്ലാത്ത ഉദ്യോഗം, കർമ്മരഹിതനിയോഗം, വേലയില്ലാതെ വരുമാനം മാത്രമുള്ള ഉദ്യോഗം, പ്രവൃത്തിയില്ലാത്ത ശമ്പളം, അനായാസജോലി, സുഖപ്രദവും അധികവരുമാനവും ഉള്ള ജോലി

Examples of sinecure in a sentence

  • The something appeared vaguely to his imagination as a private secretaryship or a sinecure of some sort.1912 (date written), [George] Bernard Shaw, “Pygmalion. Sequel: What Happened Afterwards.”, in Androcles and the Lion, Overruled...
  • With extra traffic, numerous boat trains to and from Southampton Docks, and working of empty stock, his job, like that of most signalmen, is no sinecure.1954 September, 'South Western', “Shawford Junction Signalbox”, in Railway Magazine, page 604:
  • However, by the time of World War II (if not before), politics, at least in the federal sphere, was no longer regarded as sinecure for well-intentioned part-timers.2010, Mungo MacCallum, The Monthly, April 2010, Issue 55, The Monthly Ptd Ltd, page 28

Synonyms of sinecure

Forms of sinecure

Noun
pluralsinecures
Verb
third-person singular presentsinecures
present participlesinecuring
past participlesinecured
pastsinecured

Origin of sinecure

From Ecclesiastical Latin sine cūrā (literally “without care”), ellipsis of beneficium sine cūrā (“benefice without cure [of souls, i.e. the office of a curate]”), formed from Medieval Latin sine (“without”) + cūrā (“care, charge, cure”).

Words formed from sinecure

Questions about sinecure

What does sinecure mean?
Sinecure means a position that requires little to no work, or easy work, but still gives an ample payment; a cushy job.
What is sinecure in Malayalam?
Sinecure in Malayalam is വേലയില്ലാത്ത ഉദ്യോഗം, കർമ്മരഹിതനിയോഗം, വേലയില്ലാതെ വരുമാനം മാത്രമുള്ള ഉദ്യോഗം. See Sinecure meaning in Malayalam.
How do you use sinecure in a sentence?
The something appeared vaguely to his imagination as a private secretaryship or a sinecure of some sort.
What part of speech is sinecure?
Sinecure can be a noun, an adjective or a verb.
How do you pronounce sinecure?
Sinecure is pronounced /ˈsaɪ.nɪˌkjʊə/ (UK).
What is the plural of sinecure?
The plural of sinecure is sinecures.

Words near sinecure in the dictionary

  1. sinecatechin
  2. sinecatechins
  3. sinecological
  4. sinecology
  5. sinecural
  6. sinecure
  7. sinecured
  8. sinecures
  9. sinecureship
  10. sinecureships
  11. sinecuring

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sinecure (page history and authors); sinecure (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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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Cite this entry: “sinecure.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sinecure. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.