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• Pooh Bah
  Pooh Bah

  noun

  a person who holds several positions, especially ones that give bureaucratic importance.
• Pooh-Bah
  Pooh-Bah

  noun

  a pompous self-important official holding several offices at once and fulfilling none of them

Pooh Bah

American  

[poo bah] / ˈpu ˌbɑ /

Or pooh bah,

noun

1. a person who holds several positions, especially ones that give bureaucratic importance.

2. a leader, authority, or other important person.

   one of the Pooh Bahs of the record industry.

3. a pompous, self-important person.

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Pooh-Bah British  

/ ˈpuːˈbɑː /

noun

1. a pompous self-important official holding several offices at once and fulfilling none of them

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Pooh-Bah Cultural  

1. A self-important person of high position and great influence. Pooh-Bah is a character in Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Mikado; his title is Lord-High-Everything-Else.

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Etymology

Origin of Pooh Bah

First recorded in 1880–85; after a character in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado, who holds all of the high offices of state simultaneously and uses them for personal gain

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Pooh Bah Pooh-Bah

Driven from Peking, where he was Pooh Bah in 1922, by Super-Tuchun Wu, Chang seeks to oust Wu and President Tsao Kun and resume his lordly sway in the Capital.

From Time Magazine Archive

Perhaps there was never in America an instance in which a high official so nearly fulfilled the part of "Pooh Bah."

From James Otis, the pre-revolutionist by John Clark Ridpath

Ayling has departed from our midst, and rumour says that he is leading a sort of Pooh Bah existence at Brigade Headquarters.

From All in It : K(1) Carries On A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand by Ian Hay

It happened in the second act where Ko-Ko, Pooh Bah and Pitti Sing are prostrate on the floor in the presence of the Emperor.

From The Secrets of a Savoyard by Henry A. Lytton

Pooh Bah may be a very able statesman, entitled to exert his legitimate influence. 

From All Roads Lead to Calvary by Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka) Jerome

His proper title should be “Grand Pooh-Bah and Lord High Everything Else.”

From Slate ● May 9, 2025

The Pooh-Bah of Oscar campaigning cannonballed into Broadway this year, as the lead producer of “Finding Neverland,” the over-hyped, over-miked musical adaptation of the 2004 movie.

From The New Yorker ● Apr. 28, 2015

Donald Maxwell's Scottish baronial Pooh-Bah is immaculate, with veteran Richard Angas once again an affably ghoulish Mikado.

From The Guardian ● Mar. 1, 2011

All was now ready for the Pooh-Bah of Pakistan, in whose austere person are combined the offices of Governor General, President of the Constituent Assembly and President of the Moslem League.

From Time Magazine Archive

A legend in his own time, he was the sort of man who acquired multiple nicknames: the Pooh-Bah of Paris, the Little Man with a Big Stick, the Little King.

From "The Mona Lisa Vanishes" by Nicholas Day

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