functionary
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.
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Entertaining down to the last minute, the Bastille Opera finally opened its season with a sad-faced functionary who stepped in front of the curtain to tell us that the “Simone Boccanegra” baritone was indisposed.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 7, 2026
The piece suggests this physical restraint conveyed an image of a cautious functionary rather than a dynamic leader capable of governing California during turbulent times.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 23, 2026
One of my professors, Harry Wexler, had been a young functionary under the midcentury mayor-for-life Dick Lee.
From Slate ● Sep. 21, 2025
Adolf Ziegler, the Nazi functionary charged with overseeing the exhibition, perceived no ambiguity.
From Salon ● Jun. 8, 2025
What’s more, here was a way for Hoover, a deskbound functionary, to cast himself as a dashing figure—a crusader for the modern scientific age.
From "Killers of the Flower Moon" by David Grann
Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and other Kremlin functionaries live in highly-secure estates near the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Highway west of Moscow, a suburban community dubbed “Moscow Beverly Hills.”
From Salon ● Mar. 24, 2026
The novel echoes thinkers like Hannah Arendt in pointing out how true-believing functionaries, the butt of ridicule in “normal” times, can help subsume all reason and decency to usurp a compliant and too-comfortable ruling class.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 12, 2025
A few questioned whether the Wikimedia Foundation was taking threats seriously enough when they were raised by the site’s volunteer administrators and functionaries.
From Slate ● Oct. 22, 2025
After the consumer safety and environmental movements in the 1960s, a backlash emerged from businesses, where critics argued that government functionaries who were not accountable to voters were issuing regulations whose costs outweighed their benefits.
From New York Times ● Jan. 17, 2024
As one group of highly placed religious functionaries to another, don’t do this to us!
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
Vocabulary lists containing functionary
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