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Mandarin   /mˈændərən/   Listen
Mandarin

noun
1.
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.  Synonyms: Citrus reticulata, mandarin orange, mandarin orange tree.
2.
A member of an elite intellectual or cultural group.
3.
Any high government official or bureaucrat.
4.
A high public official of imperial China.
5.
A somewhat flat reddish-orange loose skinned citrus of China.  Synonym: mandarin orange.
6.
The dialect of Chinese spoken in Beijing and adopted as the official language for all of China.  Synonyms: Beijing dialect, Mandarin Chinese, Mandarin dialect.



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"Mandarin" Quotes from Famous Books



... and minor haberdashery, the dragon laughed: his mirth took the form of a deep, guttural, honest German guffaw. He still, however, rapped sonorously on my box, shaking his head from side to side like a china mandarin. In his view my box was luggage, and luggage is not permitted in any European park. Relieved to find that my detention was not more serious, my first thought was to comply with the conditions of entrance. I begged to leave my package in the sentry-box, to be reclaimed at departure. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... marvellously to the requirements of the Twentieth Century. A reformer of 1898—that is one of the small devoted band of men who under Kang Yu Wei almost succeeded in winning over the ill-fated Emperor Kwang Hsu to carrying out a policy of modernizing the country in the teeth of fierce mandarin opposition, he possessed in his armoury every possible argument against the usurpation Yuan Shih-kai proposed to practise. He knew precisely where to strike—and with what strength; and he delivered himself over to his task with whole-hearted ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... only a top in the shape of a little man in a yellow silk gown, who could spin around very successfully on one foot, for an astonishing length of time. There was a Chinese lady-top too, who fanned herself coquettishly as she spun; and a mandarin who nodded wisely. The tops were enough ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... inhabitants (and among the rest the ambassador) had now more than a shirt or a pair of trousers on. The wreck of books, or, as it was not unaptly termed, 'a literary manure,' was spread about in all directions; whilst parliamentary robes, court dresses, and mandarin habits, intermixed with check shirts and tarry jackets, were hung around in ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly

... in the blue Mandarin silk than you would in your tailor's abominations," said Irene, referring to a dressing-gown costume she had insisted on. "Only your hair wants cutting, dear boy! I won't ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... in the season, one afternoon, the loungers in the tent looked out and remarked, "The Mandarin has come," and gave place to a richly dressed, corpulent Mongol, who entered the tent, followed by one of his servants. Salutations over, he soon showed his colours and unmasked his batteries. He had come ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour

... moment would she doubt—she dared not! Harry was coming back to the house that afternoon. Would he break something—some little china ornament upon the mantel-shelf? He generally knocked over something. What would it be to-day, the mandarin with the nodding head, or the funny little pot-bellied dwarf which she had picked up at Christie's the day before? Stella smiled delightedly as she selected this and that of her little treasures for destruction. Oh, to-day Harry Luttrell could sweep every glass or porcelain ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason

... diffident, to be sure. But Mr. Beekman gathered her a nosegay of spice pinks, carnations now, and took her to see his beautiful ducks, snowy white, in a little pond, and another pair of Muscovy ducks, then some rare Mandarin ducks from China. She told him about the ducks and chickens at Yonkers and how sorry she ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas

... of producing pieces sometimes forty feet in length. The Chinese record, called "Sou kien tchi pou," states that a kind of paper was made from hemp, and another authority (Du Halde) observes, "that old pieces of woven hemp were first made into paper in that country about A. D. 95, by a great mandarin of the palace." Linen rags were ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... Lily whispered to Bessie. "She's like an insane Chinese mandarin, rolling round her old head ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews

... powder-blue and gold, 'laborious Orient ivories,' a gorgeous hanging that had been the coat of a proud mandarin, three Chinese mats, aged and flawless, a set of silken doilies—each one displaying a miniature landscape limned with a subtlety that baffled every eye—one by one these ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates

... Lord Marnell in London?" inquired Margery, with surprise; for Margery was more astonished and interested to hear of a nobleman from London dining with her parents than a modern young lady would be if told that a Chinese mandarin was expected. ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt

... nearest and most interesting object; and they might learn from their pastoral economy, that it is for the advantage of the shepherd to protect and propagate his flock. I have already celebrated the wisdom and virtue of a Mandarin who prevented the desolation of five populous and cultivated provinces. In a spotless administration of thirty years, this friend of his country and of mankind continually labored to mitigate, or suspend, the havoc of war; to save the monuments, and to rekindle the flame, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... twilight, looking out at the garden. It was such a delight to have tea served in this way. I wonder that the fashion has been almost forgotten. Kate and I took much pleasure in choosing our tea-poys; hers had a mandarin parading on the top, and mine a flight of birds and a pagoda; and we often used them afterward, for Miss Honora asked us to come to tea whenever we liked. "A stupid, common country town" some one dared to call Deephaven in a letter once, and how bitterly we resented it! That was ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... Perhaps a disguise might have been better, but I think this will do. There—they add at least a decade to your age. If you could see yourself you wouldn't speak to your reflection. You look as scholarly as a Chinese mandarin. Remember, let me do the talking and do just ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... foretaste of evil which is the calculation, and the after-taste which is the zero. In his impassibility, which was perhaps only on the surface, were imprinted two petrifactions—the petrifaction of the heart proper to the hangman, and the petrifaction of the mind proper to the mandarin. One might have said (for the monstrous has its mode of being complete) that all things were possible to him, even emotion. In every savant there is something of the corpse, and this man was a savant. Only to see him you caught science imprinted in the gestures of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... MANDARIN. A Portuguese word derived from mandare, "to command." It is unknown to the Chinese and Tonquinese, who style their ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... ebbed, filled and drank a hearty cup; then took his seat, half reclining, on the great oaken settle; and having once again slowly shaken his head, received so much apparent benefit from the oscillation, that, like the toy called a mandarin, he continued the motion until he dropped into a slumber, from which he was first roused by the signal ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... others because, besides being a fine fruit, it keeps well, ripening when the days begin to be long and hot, and is therefore doubly welcome. The sweet orange from the Mediterranean country, and the St. Michael, with its paper rind, are also favorites, as are the delicious little Mandarin and Tangerine varieties, with their thin skin and high flavor; but the king of them all is the Washington navel, which has gained for the state its high position as an orange-raising territory. This is not a new variety, though many may believe it so. A book published in Rome ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini

... two or three companions made his way, LORD knows how, to Cochin China. It happened that the King of Cochin China was at war, and was glad of some hints from the French officer, who was encouraged to settle in Cochin China, married a Cochin Chinese lady, rose to power and credit, became a mandarin of the first class, and within the last month has arrived in France with his daughter. When his relations offered to embrace her, she drew back with horror. She is completely Chinese, and her idea of happiness is to sit still and do nothing, not ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... and behold their nobles feasting adown the long perspective of the table. Betwixt the king and queen should sit my little Annie, the prettiest fairy of them all. Here stands a turbaned Turk, threatening us with his sabre, like an ugly heathen as he is. And next a Chinese mandarin, who nods his head at Annie and myself. Here we may review a whole army of horse and foot, in red and blue uniforms, with drums, fifes, trumpets, and all kinds of noiseless music; they have halted on the shelf of this window, after their weary march from Liliput. But what cares Annie ...
— Little Annie's Ramble (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of rickshas, dog-carts, broughams, and motor cars that pour endlessly through the spotless asphalt streets with the narrow, crooked, filthy, noisome streets of their native city, to be traversed only on foot or in a sedan chair. Even the young mandarin, buried alive in some dingy walled town of the far interior, without news, events, or society, recalled with longing the lights, the gorgeous tea houses, and the alluring 'sing-song' girls of Foochow Road, and ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... saw us together. Mary (whom you seem to remember yet) is not quite easy that she had not a formal parting from you. I wish it had so happened. But you must bring her a token, a shawl or something, and remember a sprightly little mandarin for our mantelpiece, as a companion to the child I am going to purchase at the museum. She says you saw her writings about the other day, and she wishes you should know what they are. She is doing for Godwin's bookseller twenty of Shakspeare's plays, to be made into ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... countries they pass through are obliged to furnish provisions for them, and all their attendants. That which I particularly observed, as to our travelling with his baggage, was this; that though we received sufficient provisions, both for ourselves and our horses, from the country, as belonging to the mandarin, yet we were obliged to pay for every thing we had after the market-price of the country, and the mandarin's steward, or commissary of the provisions, collected it duly from us; so that our travelling in the retinue of the mandarin, though it was a ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... duck tribe which visits the States is the summer or tree duck of Carolina. It bears a strong resemblance in plumage and habits to the celebrated mandarin duck of China. The birds are found perching on the branches of trees overhanging ponds and streams—a habit not usual in the duck tribe—where they may be seen, generally a couple together, the male in his superb garments ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... forehead; she looked worried. "And there isn't a creature to turn to for advice; that Italian in the kitchen doesn't speak a blessed word of English, and Guiseppi's not much better. He keeps saying, 'Si signorina,' and wagging his head like a Chinese mandarin, until he fairly makes me dizzy, and I know all the time he doesn't ...
— The Children's Portion • Various

... library, in the cabinets of princes and ministers, in the huts of savages, in the tropics, in the frozen North, in India, in China, in Japan, in Africa, in America; now as a Christian priest, now as a soldier, a mathematician, an astrologer, a Brahmin, a mandarin, under countless disguises, by a thousand arts, luring, persuading, or compelling souls into the ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... George stated, 'the picturesque way in which Macaulay expressed our common trait of being interested in trifles that affect us closely, to the neglect of large happenings which are distant. "Here," he said, about some item of news, "is a mandarin in China who has beheaded a thousand people in a batch. I was quite shocked when I read of it this morning. During the day I contrived to cut one of my fingers. I'm ashamed to confess that I thought so much about ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... myself," admitted Mortimer, still overflushed. "I mean to put it to him squarely, as a debt of honour that he owes. I asked him whether to invest. Damn him! he never warned me not to. He is morally responsible. Any man who would sit there and nod monotonously like a mandarin, knowing all the while what he was doing to wreck the company, and let a friend put into a rotten concern all the cash he could scrape together, is ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... extreme, but during my whole acquaintance with her I never saw her for a moment absolutely still. On the rare occasions when her body was at rest, her head turned from side to side as though moved by machinery, like the mandarin dolls of the toy-shops, and I had doubts whether she ever slept. I was really concerned about her. Nervous prostration seemed the only thing she could look forward to; and later I found that Bradford Torrey had suffered similar ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller

... In addition to charms and spells, there were certain famous poems which were repeated, one of which, by Han Yu, of the T'ang epoch, had an extraordinary vogue. De Groot says that the "Ling," or magical power of this poem must have been enormous, seeing that its author was a powerful mandarin, and also one of the loftiest intellects China has produced. This poetic febrifuge is translated in full by de Groot (VI, 1054-1055), and the demon of fever, potent chiefly in the autumn, is admonished to begone to the clear and limpid ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... cardinals and friars; and behind them Satan himself, a monster with huge ox-horns on his head, and a long tail, brandishing his pitchfork and goading them onward. The Pope was generally furnished with a movable head, which could be turned round, thrown back, or made to bow, like that of a china- ware mandarin. An aged inhabitant of the neighborhood has furnished us with some fragments of the songs sung on such occasions, probably the same which our British ancestors trolled forth around their bonfires ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... for in truth, from a man so still and so tame, as to be contented to pass many years as the domestick companion of a superannuated lord and lady[103], conversation could no more be expected, than from a Chinese mandarin on a chimney-piece, or the fantastick figures on a gilt ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... that the "Ingin," who was now bowing so gravely to the master of ceremonies, was no other than the distinguished Mr. Thomas Brandon Waller, himself; "N.A., Knight of the Legion of Honor, Pupil of Piloty, etc., etc.;" that the high-class mandarin in the sacred yellow robe and peacock feather who accompanied him, was Crug the 'cellist; that the bald- headed gentleman with the pointed beard, who looked the exact presentment of the divine William, was Munson; and that the gay young gallant ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... ostentatious "Savings' Bank," which the shrewd hoarder kept as a feint to lure thieves from her hidden gold, by an open exhibition of her silver: unluckily, though, the shillings, not being leathered up nor branned, rattled like a Mandarin toy, as the trembling hand of Jennings deposited the bank beside the crockeries—and, at the well-known sound, I observed (though Simon did not, as he was in a trance of addled triumph) or fancied I observed Mrs. Quarles's head move: but ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper



Words linked to "Mandarin" :   citrus fruit, genus Citrus, clementine tree, elitist, tangerine tree, citrus, satsuma tree, clementine, Chinese, citrous fruit, functionary, tangerine, citrus tree, official, satsuma



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