mandarin.
A high government bureaucrat of the Chinese Empire.
Meaning & usage
A high government bureaucrat of the Chinese Empire.
A pedantic or elitist bureaucrat.
A pedantic senior person of influence in academia or literary circles.
Ellipsis of mandarin duck.
A senior civil servant.
A figurine of a Chinese person with movable head that was popular in the 1950s. (Cf. bobblehead.)
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *men- Proto-Indo-European *-tḗr Proto-Indo-European *-trom Proto-Indo-Iranian *mántras Sanskrit मन्त्र॑ (mántra) Proto-Indo-Iranian *-in- Sanskrit -इन् (-in) Sanskrit म॒न्त्रिन् (mantrín)bor. Malay menteribor. Portuguese mandarimbor. English mandarin From Portuguese mandarim, mandarij, from Malay menteri, manteri, and its source, Sanskrit मन्त्रिन् (mantrin, “minister, councillor”), from मन्त्र (mantra, “counsel, maxim, mantra”) + -इन् (-in, an agent suffix).
Pertaining to or reminiscent of mandarins; deliberately superior or complex; esoteric, highbrow, obscurantist.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *men- Proto-Indo-European *-tḗr Proto-Indo-European *-trom Proto-Indo-Iranian *mántras Sanskrit मन्त्र॑ (mántra) Proto-Indo-Iranian *-in- Sanskrit -इन् (-in) Sanskrit म॒न्त्रिन् (mantrín)bor. Malay menteribor. Portuguese mandarimbor. English mandarin From Portuguese mandarim, mandarij, from Malay menteri, manteri, and its source, Sanskrit मन्त्रिन् (mantrin, “minister, councillor”), from मन्त्र (mantra, “counsel, maxim, mantra”) + -इन् (-in, an agent suffix).
Ellipsis of mandarin orange: A small, sweet citrus fruit.
Ellipsis of mandarin orange: A tree of the species Citrus reticulata.
An orange colour.
Where this word comes from
From French mandarine, feminine of mandarin, probably formed as Etymology 1, above, from the yellow colour of the mandarins' costume.
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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.