panjandrum
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of panjandrum
1745–55; pseudo-Latin word (based on pan- ) coined by Samuel Foote (1720–77), English dramatist and actor
Explanation
You can refer to the bossy, self-important president of your school's French club as a panjandrum, especially when she marches around assigning everyone tasks. Something about the word panjandrum suggests subcontinental origin, but it's actually a made-up word from the eighteenth century, designating an important and often overbearing person. The word was also commandeered in World War II to refer to a failed experimental weapon meant to breach sea walls.
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.
Roberts’ smoldering, high-beam intensity caught the attention of Joe Papp, a panjandrum of New York theater who cast Roberts in a Public Theater production of the Civil War drama “Rebel Women.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 17, 2024
Frenzied buying and frenzied borrowing had made him the undisputed grand panjandrum of cinema, ruling a $200,000,000 empire.
From Time Magazine Archive
She gave space to Robert Frost long before he became the panjandrum of U.S. poetry.
From Time Magazine Archive
At the time they were written, such sentiments were heresy to the Left Bank literati and their grand panjandrum, Jean-Paul Sartre.
From Time Magazine Archive
I did not care for all this panjandrum of punctiliousness, but was, I hope, civil and chatty with everybody.
From James Nasmyth: Engineer; an autobiography by Smiles, Samuel
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.
