mandarins
- 1Plural of mandarin.
The senior mandarins quietly shaped policy long before any minister spoke.
He bought a crate of mandarins to last the family through the winter.
Note
A regular plural that gathers very different things under one spelling. Applied to people, it is the historical title for officials of the Chinese Empire, an informal British name for senior civil servants, and a sometimes derogatory label for the pedants who hold sway in academic or literary circles. Context decides the rest: a pond of mandarins means mandarin ducks, while a shelf of 1950s mandarins means figurines with movable heads.
mandarins is a form of mandarin
mandarin, noun: A small, sweet citrus fruit, also known as a mandarin orange. Full entry
- Forms
- mandarinmandarins plural
- Spelling
- mandarin → mandarins: add -s
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /z/.
Use it in a sentence
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