Figurative Meaning
In modern English, mandarin is also used to refer to any (though usually a senior) civil servant, often in a satirical context, and particularly in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries.
Read more about this topic: Mandarin (bureaucrat)
Famous quotes containing the words figurative and/or meaning:
“Church neglect
And figurative use have pretty well
Reduced him to a shadow of himself.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Delusions that shrink to the size of a woman’s glove,
Then sicken inclusively outwards:
. . . the incessant recital
Intoned by reality, larded with technical terms,
Each one double-yolked with meaning and meaning’s rebuttal:
For the skirl of that bulletin unpicks the world like a knot....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)