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
They warned off the rabble with the insolence every jack-in-office displays towards his inferiors.
From The Great Mogul by Tracy, Louis
Perhaps she was a loud-voiced termagant; perhaps merely the ill-used wife of a drunken wretch, who well deserved her scolding; or the daring teller of home truths to some jack-in-office, who thus revenged himself.
From Vanishing England by Ditchfield, P. H. (Peter Hampson)
We can easily imagine the high-and-mighty jack-in-office he must have been in Adolph's time.
From Richard Wagner Composer of Operas by Runciman, John F.
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.
