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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

functionary.

A person employed as an official in a bureaucracy (usually corporate or governmental) who holds limited authority and primarily serves to carry out a simple function for which discretion is minimal or not required.

11 characters4 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈfʌŋ(k).ʃn̩.(ə)ri/Received-Pronunciation/ˈfʌŋ(k).ʃəˌnɛ.ri/General-American
  1. A person employed as an official in a bureaucracy (usually corporate or governmental) who holds limited authority and primarily serves to carry out a simple function for which discretion is minimal or not required.

  2. Such a person who is petty, pedantic, short-sighted, uncaring, or counterproductive; sometimes also with implication of being amoral or corrupt.

Where this word comes from

From French fonctionnaire; by surface analysis, function + -ary.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.