mandarin
Meanings
Plural: mandarins
Noun
- shrub or small tree having flattened globose fruit with very sweet aromatic pulp and thin yellow-orange to flame-orange rind that is loose and easily removed; native to southeastern Asia
- a member of an elite intellectual or cultural group
- any high government official or bureaucrat
- a high public official of imperial China
- a somewhat flat reddish-orange loose skinned citrus of China
- the dialect of Chinese spoken in Beijing and adopted as the official language for all of China
- A high government bureaucrat of the Chinese Empire.
- A pedantic or elitist bureaucrat.
- A pedantic senior person of influence in academia or literary circles.
- Ellipsis of mandarin duck.
- A senior civil servant.
- Ellipsis of mandarin orange:
- A small, sweet citrus fruit.
- Ellipsis of mandarin orange:
- A tree of the species Citrus reticulata.
- An orange colour.
Adj
- Pertaining to or reminiscent of mandarins; deliberately superior or complex; esoteric, highbrow, obscurantist.
Origin / 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). In Chinese folk etymology, the word originates from Mandarin 滿大人 /满大人 (Mǎndàrén, literally “Manchu important man”).
Synonyms
Beijing dialect, Citrus reticulata, Mandarin Chinese, Mandarin dialect, mandarin orange, mandarin orange tree
Scrabble Score: 11
mandarin is a valid Scrabble (US) TWL wordmandarin is a valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
mandarin is a valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary