panjandrum

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (3)  · 
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.

View all »
Definitions (3)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. noun An important or self-important person: "a panjandrum of the publishing business” (Nat Hentoff).

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (1)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (1)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples

  • 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
 

Tags

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

Panjandrum has been looked up 433 times, favorited 4 times, listed 52 times, and commented on 3 times.

On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. After the Grand Panjandrum, a character in a nonsense farrago written by Samuel Foote (1720-1777).

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. Also rarely panjandarum; a word used by Samuel Foote in a string of rigmarole as a test for Macklin, who boasted of his memory; from pan-,all, + -jandrum, a Latin-looking element of no meaning.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »

/pænˈdʒændrəm/
by American Heritage

Charts

frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

We are still working on calculating this word's frequency.

Recent Lookups

panjandrum · cautiously · unctuous · wylde · repetoire

Recent Favorites

cloud-shadows · ombrophobous · turncoat · metaplasm · emulous

Recent Pronunciations

milosrdenstvi · lichen-covered · futon · sagacity · monoragngocious