Etymology From Portuguese mandarim, mandarij, from Malay menteri, manteri, and its source, Sanskrit मन्त्रिन् (mantrin, “minister, councillor”), from मन्त्र (mantra, “counsel, maxim, mantra”) + -इन् (-in, an agent suffix).
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Historical A high government bureaucrat of the Chinese Empire.
LIKE THE MANDARINS of old, the rulers of China live behind high walls. When they emerge, which they rarely do, they travel in cars with rear windows curtained like sedan chairs. They live in the Chung Nan Hai, a walled park adjacent to the Forbidden City from where ancient dynasties ruled the Celestial Empire.1991, Chris Mullin, The Year of the Fire Monkey (Fiction), London: Chatto & Windus, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 252:
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A pedantic or elitist bureaucrat.
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Derogatory, Sometimes A pedantic senior person of influence in academia or literary circles.
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 April 22, “The Beauty of His Malice”, in Time, archived from the original on 06 Nov 2012:
When mandarins on the court pointed to obscure language in the Constitution to overturn a century of precedent and declare the income tax unconstitutional, Harlan sided with precedent[.]2021 June 23, Peter S. Canellos, “Why The ‘Trump Court’ Won’t Be Like Trump”, in Politico:
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When institutional mandarins such as this eminent pair set out to undermine the traditional basis for remunerating the products of the mind, you might expect a lowly scribe (such as your reviewer) to take umbrage.2024 January 13, Boyd Tonkin, “The culture of copyright creep”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 9:
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Biology, Natural sciences, OrnithologyAbbreviation, Ellipsis Ellipsis of mandarin duck.
A figurine of a Chinese person with movable head that was popular in the 1950s. (Cf. bobblehead.)
He lay quietly in the hydropathic bed while his heart shuddered and his eyes focused at random on objects in the room, simulating a calm he could not feel. The walls of green jade, the nightlight in the porcelain mandarin whose head nodded interminably if you touched him, the multi-clock that radiated the time of three planets and six satellites, the bed itself, a crystal pool flowing with carbonated glycerine at ninety-nine point nine Fahrenheit.1953, Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man:
Etymology From Portuguese mandarim, mandarij, from Malay menteri, manteri, and its source, Sanskrit मन्त्रिन् (mantrin, “minister, councillor”), from मन्त्र (mantra, “counsel, maxim, mantra”) + -इन् (-in, an agent suffix).
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Pertaining to or reminiscent of mandarins; deliberately superior or complex; esoteric, highbrow, obscurantist.
A mandarin impassivity had descended over Smiley's face. The earlier emotion was quite gone.1979, John Le Carré, Smiley's People, Folio Society, published 2010, page 58:
[Anatole] Broyard's columns were suffused with both worldliness and high culture. Wry, mandarin, even self-amused at times, he wrote like a man about town, but one who just happened to have all of Western literature at his fingertips.1997, Henry Louis Gates Jr., “The Passing of Anatole Broyard”, in Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man, New York: Random House, pages 180–181:
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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 […].2007, Marina Warner, “Doubly Damned”, in London Review of Books, 29:3, p. 26: