functionary
Example Sentences
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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
Whenever he referred to him in his speeches he was careful to strip him of any human attributes and present him as an abstract functionary in some larger scheme.
From "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy
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
He, not his faithful functionaries, needs to take the blame.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 24, 2025
The most important people in the country all along were the rule-followers—corporate attorneys, regional judges, visa-processing functionaries, tax assessors, customs officials, food and drug regulators.
From Slate ● Sep. 19, 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
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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