mandarin

Plural: mandarins

Noun

• A small, slightly flattened citrus fruit with a loose skin.
• 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.

Examples

• The sweet taste of victory was like a MANDARIN after winning a tough game of Words With Friends.

Synonyms

Beijing dialect, Citrus reticulata, Mandarin Chinese, Mandarin dialect, mandarin orange, mandarin orange tree