panjandrum

• I did not care for all this panjandrum of punctiliousness, but was, I hope, civil and chatty with everybody. —  James Nasmyth: Engineer, An Autobiography.
• Anthony Quinton [NYR, May 29] has either got the wrong sage or the wrong suburb — Coleridge was certainly known as "the sage of Highgate," and Engels was described by the irritated Hyndman as "the great panjandrum" of Regent's Park; but Marx lived in Kentish Town, and however sagacious his posthumous works, they were at least written before his move to Highgate Cemetery, even if they weren't read until long afterwards. —  Wrong Suburb
• Why don’t you get some of your friends to go for that wooden-faced panjandrum — eh? —  The Secret Agent; a Simple Tale
• In September 2007, Jimbo Wales, Wikipedia's panjandrum — himself an inclusionist who believes that if people want an article about every Pokemon character, then hey, let it happen — posted a one-sentence stub about Mzoli's, a restaurant on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa. —  The Charms of Wikipedia
• A fauntleroy, a grand panjandrum? —  The Satanic Verses

Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the Same Context