From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishmandarinman·da·rin /ˈmændərɪn/ noun [countable] 1 DF (also mandarin orange) a kind of small orange with skin that is easy to remove2 British EnglishPGO an important government official who people think has too much power Civil Service mandarins3 PGOan important government official in the former Chinese empire
Examples from the Corpus
mandarin• Great guy, Jim: the son of a mandarin.• Male actors could not become mandarins, nor could actresses marry aristocrats.• The frightened mandarins agreed to parley, but Le Lieur stalled, awaiting Montigny.• The avenue ends with ferocious looking stone generals and solemn looking mandarins of various kinds.• Today you have watched our mandarins banging their foreheads on the flagstones - but not for our emperor!• Their hero was Ngo Quyen, a provincial mandarin.• So the mandarins set about finding an alternative.• Otherwise they will have barely tried life under Maastricht before their mandarins must start haggling again.MandarinMandarin noun [uncountable] SLLthe official language of China, spoken by most educated Chinese peopleExamples from the Corpus
Mandarin• I would have been great as a chef, a Mandarin actor, or a fence post.• The pronunciations given for these components, and for the characters of which they form part, are those of present-day Mandarin.• The most widely spoken of these is Mandarin with about 800m speakers.• Most speak Cantonese, with a little Mandarin and Hakka also spoken.• He was a matinee-handsome man who could have been an actor on the Mandarin stage.• This was before I had the clips that translated into expense accounts and hotels like the Shangri-la or the Mandarin.• For you, the Mandarin Club guest, breakfast in the morning and cocktails in the evening are with our compliments.Origin mandarin 1. (1700-1800) French mandarine, from Spanish mandarina, probably from mandarín 'MANDARIN3'; perhaps because mandarins wore orange-colored clothes. 2. (1500-1600) Portuguese mandarim, from Malay menteri, from Sanskrit mantrin “adviser”, from mantra; → MANTRA Mandarin (1700-1800) mandarin 