mandarin
Pluralmandarins
Pluralmandarins
- 1A small, sweet fruit from the orange family.
She packed two mandarins in her lunch bag.
This mandarin is sweet and very easy to peel.
Similartangerine
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- 2The standard kind of Chinese, used as an official language in China, Taiwan and Singapore.
My brother speaks Mandarin and a little Cantonese.
She is learning Mandarin so she can work in Beijing.
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- 3An important government official in China long ago, when it was ruled by emperors.
In old China, a young man studied for years to pass the exams and become a mandarin.
The villagers bowed low when the mandarin passed through their town.
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- 4A large family of Chinese ways of speaking that includes many dialects.
Mandarin has many dialects, and they don't all sound the same.
People from different towns may speak different dialects of Mandarin.
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- 5The tree that mandarins grow on.
Grandpa planted a mandarin by the fence, and now it is taller than me.
Our mandarin is covered in white flowers this spring.
- 6An official who cares too much about small rules or acts as if they are better than other people.
A mandarin at the city office sent my form back because I used blue ink instead of black.
The mandarins at headquarters never listen to ordinary workers.
Similarbureaucrat, functionary
- 7A top official who works for the government but is not a politician.
The minister asked a top mandarin to write a report on the problem.
Mandarins at the Foreign Office were unhappy with the new plan.
Similarofficial, bureaucrat
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- 8A kind of orange color.
Her new bike is painted a bright mandarin.
The sneakers come in black, white or mandarin.
Similartangerine
- 9Short for mandarin duck, a very colorful duck with a red bill.
A mandarin with a red bill swam slowly across the pond.
We saw a mandarin sitting on a branch above the water, cleaning its feathers.
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- 10A powerful, high-ranking person at a university or among writers who is too fussy about details.
The young poet did not care what the literary mandarins thought of her work.
A mandarin at the university said the student's essay broke too many rules.
Similargrandee
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- 11
- 12A small figure of a Chinese person whose head can move, popular in the 1950s.
My aunt has an old mandarin on her shelf, and its head nods when you tap it.
Grandma bought the little mandarin at a fair when she was young, and its painted face still smiles from her window.
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Practice
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Origins
From Portuguese, from a Malay word that came from Sanskrit mantrin, meaning "minister" or "councillor".
From French mandarine. The fruit was probably named after the yellow clothes that mandarins wore.
From mandarin, an official in imperial China, because it was the language these officials spoke. It now names Standard Chinese and the related dialects.