# mandarin

Pronunciation: say "MAN-duh-rin" /ˈmæn.də.ɹɪn/

## Noun

1. A small, sweet citrus fruit, also known as a mandarin orange.
   - Simple: A small, sweet fruit from the orange family.
   - _He peeled a mandarin and shared the segments with his daughter._
   - _Crates of mandarins fill the market stalls every winter._
3. A high-ranking government official of the Chinese Empire.
   - Simple: An important government official in China long ago, when it was ruled by emperors.
   - _The emperor sent a mandarin from the capital to look into the failed harvest._
   - _Merchants seeking a license waited for days outside the mandarin's office._
5. A citrus tree of the species Citrus reticulata, on which mandarins grow.
   - Simple: The tree that mandarins grow on.
   - _She grew a mandarin from seed, and after six years it finally bore fruit._
   - _The mandarin by the back door blossoms in spring and is heavy with fruit by winter._
6. A pedantic or elitist bureaucrat, fussy about minor rules or dismissive of ordinary people.
   - Simple: An official who cares too much about small rules or acts as if they are better than other people.
   - _The agency's mandarins rejected the grant application because one box on page twelve was left blank._
   - _A mandarin at the housing authority waved away the tenants' complaints as the grumbling of people who did not understand policy._
7. A high-ranking member of the civil service, the permanent staff of government departments. *(colloquial, British)*
   - Simple: A top official who works for the government but is not a politician.
   - _Treasury mandarins have warned the Chancellor that the scheme is unaffordable._
   - _Ministers come and go, but a Whitehall mandarin can serve under several governments._
8. A particular shade of orange.
   - Simple: A kind of orange color.
   - _This season's sweaters come in navy, cream and mandarin._
   - _The designer chose a warm mandarin for the accent wall._
9. Short for mandarin duck. — Ellipsis of mandarin duck.
   - Simple: Short for mandarin duck, a very colorful duck with a red bill.
   - _A mandarin perched on a low branch above the stream, its red bill bright against the leaves._
   - _Birdwatchers crowded the bank after a mandarin turned up among the mallards on the canal._
10. A pedantic senior figure with influence in academia or in literary circles.
   - Simple: A powerful, high-ranking person at a university or among writers who is too fussy about details.
   - _As the reigning mandarin of the English department, he decided which theories were worth teaching._
   - _The novel was a bestseller long before the mandarins of the literary establishment took notice._
12. A figurine of a Chinese person with a movable, nodding head, popular in the 1950s.
   - Simple: A small figure of a Chinese person whose head can move, popular in the 1950s.
   - _At the flea market she found a porcelain mandarin with its nodding head still in working order._
   - _The antique dealer tapped the little mandarin, and its head bobbed for nearly a minute._

## Noun · Mandarin

2. The standard variety of Chinese, an official language of China and Taiwan and one of Singapore's four official languages; also called Putonghua, Guoyu or Huayu.
   - Simple: The standard kind of Chinese, used as an official language in China, Taiwan and Singapore.
   - _The tour guide switched between Mandarin and English for the mixed group._
   - _She took a job in Shanghai after two years of studying Mandarin at night school._
4. A branch of the Chinese languages made up of many dialects, also known as Guanhua or Beifanghua.
   - Simple: A large family of Chinese ways of speaking that includes many dialects.
   - _Linguists divide Mandarin into several regional groups, each with its own dialects._
   - _Her grandparents spoke a rural dialect of Mandarin that their city relatives struggled to follow._

## Adjective

11. Typical of mandarins or reminiscent of them: deliberately superior or complex, highbrow, and obscure to outsiders.
   - Simple: Acting clever and superior on purpose, in a way most people find hard to follow.
   - _Critics admired the novel's ambition but found its mandarin prose exhausting._
   - _She answered the reporters with a cool, mandarin detachment, as if their questions were beneath her._

## Origin

**Meanings 3, 6–7, 9–12** — From Portuguese mandarim, from Malay menteri and its source, Sanskrit mantrin ("minister, councillor"), from mantra ("counsel, maxim, mantra") + -in, a suffix for the person who does something. A Chinese folk etymology instead traces it to Mandarin Mǎndàrén, literally "Manchu important man".
**Meanings 1, 5, 8** — From French mandarine, the feminine of mandarin, probably from the yellow color of the mandarins' costume.
**Meanings 2, 4** — From mandarin ("an official of imperial China"), translating Chinese Guānhuà ("officials' speech"), the common language used by imperial officials. The name now covers Standard Chinese and the wider group of related dialects.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/mandarin (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).