as in official
a worker in a government agency
the officious mandarins in the motor vehicles department refused to let me renew my license without all of the required forms
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of mandarin
At a time when only three European cities -- London, Paris, and Naples -- could boast 300,000 inhabitants, Beijing’s imperial quarter alone housed that many people, including many of the mandarins who helped the emperor rule his vast kingdom.
—
John Micklethwait, Foreign Affairs, 29 May 2014
Enjoy a mini Ketel One espresso martini or a mini mandarin and cream martini for dessert.
—Marcus D. Smith, Sacramento Bee, 3 Jan. 2025
Kan and Noda, both former finance ministers, are now criticized as lapdogs of Tokyo's powerful mandarins, chiefly because of their willingness to raise taxes.
—Takashi Yokota, Foreign Affairs, 19 Sep. 2011
Two brown bears, a lion, a couple of yaks, five cockatoos, 25 pheasants and 40 mandarin ducks.
—Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY, 21 Nov. 2024
See All Example Sentences for mandarin
John Micklethwait, Foreign Affairs, 29 May 2014
Enjoy a mini Ketel One espresso martini or a mini mandarin and cream martini for dessert.
—Marcus D. Smith, Sacramento Bee, 3 Jan. 2025
Kan and Noda, both former finance ministers, are now criticized as lapdogs of Tokyo's powerful mandarins, chiefly because of their willingness to raise taxes.
—Takashi Yokota, Foreign Affairs, 19 Sep. 2011
Two brown bears, a lion, a couple of yaks, five cockatoos, 25 pheasants and 40 mandarin ducks.
—Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY, 21 Nov. 2024
See All Example Sentences for mandarin
Recent Examples of Synonyms for mandarin
Noun
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Court officials, meanwhile, have strongly pushed back against SEIU’s claims of short-staffing, inadequate cost-of-living adjustments and a failure to fully and properly train employees.—
Jakob Rodgers,
The Mercury News,
22 Feb. 2025
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Smith already has been staying full-time at a community facility with around-the-clock supervision for the past nine months, with Friday's decision formally discharging him from the hospital, officials said.—
CBS News,
CBS News,
22 Feb. 2025
Noun
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Itay’s official cinematic and cultural organizations and departments have partnered effectively with the Venice Festival, even if those partnerships were often fraught with pressures as competing arts fiefdoms set bureaucrat against bureaucrat.—
Steven Gaydos,
Variety,
18 Feb. 2025
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Current and former officials see it as a campaign of retribution against those who opposed his earlier work, as well as an opportunity to fulfill his most controversial policies by sidelining bureaucrats who get in his way.—
Brett Murphy,
ProPublica,
16 Feb. 2025
Noun
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In the few departments that held hearings on Wednesday, attendees reported chaotic and sluggish proceedings, with supervisors filling in for court clerks and at least one judge filling out minute orders by hand.—
Jakob Rodgers,
The Mercury News,
19 Feb. 2025
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Two were from the wrongful convictions of James Irons and Thomas Malik, who in 1995 were charged with the murder of a subway clerk.—
Chelsia Rose Marcius,
New York Times,
18 Feb. 2025
Noun
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Related article Cabinet officials caught off guard and frustrated by Musk’s directives to federal employees A second email from OPM early Monday evening told workers they were not required to reply, which didn’t clear much up.—
Jeanne Sahadi,
CNN,
27 Feb. 2025
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Between fiscal years 2015 to 2019, agency inspectors general substantiated only 100 allegations of employee time and attendance misconduct or fraud out of a federal workforce of around 2.1 million employees (the GAO report did not include postal workers).—
Laura Doan,
CBS News,
27 Feb. 2025
Noun
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That all-important contrast is missing (as are any employees who do the manual labor of cleaning up after the guests), which is why the show feels like a deflated satire that never had the courage of its convictions to begin with.—
Nina Metz,
Chicago Tribune,
26 Feb. 2025
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The store also told customers that Tedford was not associated with their store either as a current or former employee.—
Ross Rosenfeld,
Newsweek,
26 Feb. 2025
Noun
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As the German journalist Ronen Steinke argues in his own first-rate biography, Bauer’s greatest achievement was a sprawling trial of some 20 German officers and functionaries at Auschwitz, held in a Frankfurt courtroom in the mid-60s.—
Gary J. Bass,
New York Times,
22 Feb. 2025
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The play drew on the verbatim testimony of SS officers, Nazi functionaries and camp survivors, to reconstruct the genocidal horror in harrowing, undeniable detail.—
Scott Roxborough,
The Hollywood Reporter,
27 Jan. 2025
Noun
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But some more permanent civil servants are also out.—
Emily Peck,
Axios,
14 Feb. 2025
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On Thursday, Trump’s H.R. arm told as many as 200,000 feds with less than two years in their jobs that their careers as civil servants were over.—
Philip Elliott,
TIME,
14 Feb. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Mandarin.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/mandarin. Accessed 3 Mar. 2025.
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