mandarin
see also: Mandarin
Pronunciation
Mandarin
Pronunciation Noun
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.029
see also: Mandarin
Pronunciation
- IPA: /ˈmæn.də.ɹɪn/
mandarin (plural mandarins)
- (historical) a high government bureaucrat of the Chinese Empire [from 1580s]
- a pedantic or elitist bureaucrat
- (often, pejorative) a pedantic senior person of influence in academia or literary circles
- 1966, [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,899186-1,00.html "The Beauty of His Malice"], Time:
- Its sting preserved to literature a fierce peculiar genius [Waugh] who, in the 40 years before his death last week at 62, achieved recognition as the grand old mandarin of modern British prose and as a satirist whose skill at sticking pens in people rates him a roomy cell in the murderers’ row (Swift, Pope, Wilde, Shaw) of English letters.
- 1966, [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,899186-1,00.html "The Beauty of His Malice"], Time:
- (ornithology) Ellipsis of mandarin duck#English|mandarin duck
- (informal, British) a senior civil servant
mandarin
- pertaining to or reminiscent of mandarins; deliberately superior or complex; esoteric, highbrow, obscurantist [from 20th c.]
- 1979, John Le Carré, Smiley's People, Folio Society 2010, p. 58:
- A mandarin impassivity had descended over Smiley's face. The earlier emotion was quite gone.
- 2007, Marina Warner, ‘Doubly Damned’, London Review of Books 29:3, p. 26:
- Though alert to riddles' strong roots in vernacular narrative, Cook's tastes are mandarin, and she gives a loving account of Wallace Stevens's meditations on the life of poetic images and simile […].
- 1979, John Le Carré, Smiley's People, Folio Society 2010, p. 58:
mandarin (plural mandarins)
- Ellipsis of mandarin orange#English|mandarin orange:
- a small, sweet citrus fruit
- tree of species Citrus reticulata
- (color) an orange colour
Mandarin
Pronunciation Noun
mandarin (uncountable)
- Standard Mandarin, an official language of China and Taiwan, and one of four official languages in Singapore; Putonghua, Guoyu or Huayu
- Far fewer people understood Mandarin in Hotan than anywhere else I'd been in Xinjiang. It made getting around difficult, as not only did the taxi drivers fail to understand what I was saying, but they couldn't read an address either. Most ignored or didn't know the Chinese names given to the streets anyway.
- A branch of the Chinese languages, consisting of many dialects; Guanhua or Beifanghua.
- Beifanghua, Guanhua, Guoyu, Huayu, Mandarin Chinese, Putonghua, Standard Chinese, Standard Mandarin, Standard Spoken Chinese
- French: mandarin
- German: Mandarin, Hochchinesisch
- Italian: mandarino
- Portuguese: mandarim
- Russian: путунхуа́
- Spanish: mandarín, chino mandarín
- Russian: мандари́н
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.029