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
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
The party, not the government, dictates policy and the foreign minister is essentially a functionary.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 26, 2023
Finally, we were escorted down the hall by a nervous little functionary, who kept checking his watch and motioning for us to hurry along.
From "In the Time of the Butterflies" by Julia Alvarez
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
That so many corrupt functionaries and cartel capos ultimately face responsibility in the United States — and not in Mexico — underscores a fundamental weakness of the Mexican justice system, observers say.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 7, 2025
Much of it came from poorly paid state functionaries whose livelihoods depended on using police and administrative authority to extract cash from upstart capitalists.
From "Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West" by Blaine Harden
Vocabulary lists containing functionary
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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The Left Hand of Darkness
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Around the World in Eighty Days
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