a person who holds several positions, especially ones that give bureaucratic importance.
a leader, authority, or other important person.
one of the Pooh Bahs of the record industry.
a pompous, self-important person.
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
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
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
He doesn’t know it’s only Pooh Bah speaking from different corners of the stage.
From All Roads Lead to Calvary by Jerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka)
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 Ridpath, John Clark
Descended from a primordial atomic globule, you know, like Pooh Bah.
From A Prefect's Uncle by Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
Behind the scenes, unknown to me, Pooh Bah had fainted, and one of his entrances had to be made by Pish Tush.
From The Secrets of a Savoyard by Lytton, Henry A.
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
Some conspiracy theorists even think that the money overrun was condoned by longtime MCA Pooh-Bah Lew Wasserman.
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
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.
