panjandrum
noun
Did you know?
Panjandrum looks like it might be a combination of Latin and Greek roots, but in fact it is a nonsense word coined by British actor and playwright Samuel Foote around 1755. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Foote made up a line of gibberish to "test the memory of his fellow actor Charles Macklin, who had asserted that he could repeat anything after hearing it once." Foote's made-up line was, "And there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyulies and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at the top." Some 75 years after this, Foote's passage appeared in a book of stories for children by the Anglo-Irish writer Maria Edgeworth. It took another quarter century before English speakers actually incorporated panjandrum into their general vocabulary.
Examples of panjandrum in a Sentence
Andrew Cockburn, Harper's Magazine, 5 Sep. 2024
Bamford, while cutting in and out of the lives of Hollywood’s panjandrums, takes us to Pyongyang, where Kim’s minions are stealing money and cryptocurrency while wreaking havoc on computer systems around the world.
—Tim Weiner, The New Republic, 27 Mar. 2023
Calvin Klein, the panjandrum of pants, sold his beach house there for $84.4m.
—The Economist, 13 Mar. 2021
The industry’s panjandrums insist that a new culture of compliance will make FDA site closures a thing of the past.
—The Economist, 22 Mar. 2018
The forum, for its part, will drum up support for the venture among the world’s panjandrums—and with luck some dosh as well.
—The Economist, 23 Jan. 2018
Dictionary Entries Near panjandrum
Cite this Entry
“Panjandrum.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/panjandrum. Accessed 23 Nov. 2024.
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