jack-in-office
Britishnoun
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
He was equally fine as Malvolio: a preening, stiff-gaited jack-in-office who, like all first-rate Malvolios, enlisted one's sympathy in his downfall.
From The Guardian ● Feb. 18, 2013
But last week Franz Josef Strauss was learning firsthand the full depth of West Germans' postwar distaste for jack-in-office arrogance.
From Time Magazine Archive
The whole system teems with "wait-a-bit" thorns; and in such rare cases when difficulties do not exist, some jack-in-office is certain to arrive with the sole object and intention of inventing them.
From On the Heels of De Wet by James, Lionel
But even that jack-in-office could perceive that the poor Captain thought of his sick wife up stairs, and his little children, ten times for one thought he ever gave to his own position.
From Erema — My Father's Sin by Blackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
This jack-in-office, a very Dogberry, encountered Moll returning down Ludgate Hill from some merry-making, a lanthorn carried pompously before her.
From A Book of Scoundrels by Whibley, Charles
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
