officialdom

English

Etymology

From official +‎ -dom.

Pronunciation

• enPR: ə-fĭʹ-shəl-dəm, IPA^(key): /əˈfɪ.ʃəl.dəm/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪʃəldəm

Noun

officialdom (countable and uncountable, plural officialdoms)

1. The people elected to government or employed in the civil service.
   • 1960 June 10, Walt Kelly, Pogo, comic strip, →ISBN, page 153:

     [Magazine staffer:] In the bag may be the next chief—a wedding to one of officialdom's family will assure certainty.

   • 2005, Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide‎^[1], New York: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, archived from the original on 10 April 2023, page 44:

     Nevertheless Armenian leaders at first retained faith in the reform agenda of the Porte, ascribing their ills to incompetent officialdom and Kurdish lawlessness.

   • 2013, James Palmer, ‘Kept women’, Aeon:

     An enormous amount of off-book money sloshes around Chinese business and officialdom, and some of it runs into handbags.

2. (rare) The state of being official
   • 2013, Christian Ortner, Hermann Hinterstoisser; [], The Austro-Hungarian Army in the First World War. Uniforms & Equipment - from 1914 to 1918:

     This was largely due to its widespread use in the army and officialdom in the Ottoman Empire.

Translations

The people elected to government or employed in the civil service

• Bulgarian: чиновничество n (činovničestvo)
• French: fonctionnariat (fr) m
• Georgian: ჩინოვნიკობა (činovniḳoba)
• Korean: 벼슬 (ko) (byeoseul), 관직(官職) (ko) (gwanjik)
• Russian: чиновничество (ru) n (činovničestvo)