pooh-bah

noun

ˈpü-ˌbä 

-ˌbȯ

variants or less commonly poo-bah

often capitalized P&B

1

: a person holding many public or private offices

2

: a person in high position or of great influence

Did you know?

The original Pooh-Bah was an arrogant, buffoonish bureaucrat introduced in the 1885 Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Mikado. In that show, the character Pooh-Bah, whose title is "Lord High Everything Else," very "humbly" agrees to accept several important government offices (and their salaries) after a series of officials resign. He'll do anything if the bribe is big enough, and he loves to strut and show off to anyone who might be impressed by his grandeur. It didn't take English speakers long to adopt pooh-bah as a term for someone who holds either many offices or a high position, and the word still often carries a suggestion of pompousness.

Synonyms

• big
• big boy
• big cheese
• big gun
• big leaguer
• big shot
• big wheel
• big-timer
• bigfoot
• biggie
• bigwig
• fat cat
• heavy
• heavy hitter
• heavyweight
• high-muck-a-muck
• high-muckety-muck
• honcho
• kahuna
• kingfish
• kingpin
• major leaguer
• muckety-muck
• muck-a-muck
• mucky-muck
• nabob
• nawab
• nibs
• nob [chiefly British]
• wheel

Examples of pooh-bah in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Like Joe Rogan, the carnivorous pooh-bah of this intellectual space, Brand appeared interested in teaching a certain kind of man how to be a certain kind of man, mining the tension between think-for-yourself riffs and listen-to-me conclusions. —Matt Flegenheimer, New York Times, 13 Nov. 2023

But the pooh-bahs in Brussels didn’t exactly rush to say yes. —Tunku Varadarajan, WSJ, 25 Oct. 2023

Word History

Etymology

Pooh-Bah, character in Gilbert and Sullivan's opera The Mikado (1885) bearing the title Lord-High-Everything-Else

First Known Use

1886, in the meaning defined at sense 1

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