How to Use functionary in a Sentence

functionary

noun

• He was a party functionary during the political campaign.
• Stola is guilty simply of being a scholar and a thinker, rather than a functionary.
  — Masha Gessen, The New Yorker, 23 Sep. 2019
• Thomas grieves but must interact with the businesslike functionaries of death.
  — Jeffrey Arlo Brown, New York Times, 17 Jan. 2024
• But few had ever bothered to get inside the mind of the shady functionary who swindled the public garbage fund.
  — New York Times, 17 May 2021
• Prison rules required that her writings be kept as evidence against her, and no functionary dared to dispose of them.
  — Lian Xi, WSJ, 13 Apr. 2018
• However, the people who are most to blame for Afghanistan aren’t these functionaries.
  — Elliot Ackerman, Time, 10 Dec. 2019
• Ms Suu Kyi could, after all, have sent a drab functionary to present Myanmar’s case.
  — The Economist, 11 Dec. 2019
• But this newsletter is more focused on how Trump and his fawning functionaries speak about and for him.
  — Chris Brennan, USA Today, 29 Aug. 2025
• When Leshchenko arrived at headquarters, a functionary told him that the plans were already scrambled.
  — Franklin Foer, The Atlantic, 8 Sep. 2022
• Without a single hand going up or down, the functionary announced that the motion had passed 14–1.
  — Alejandro Varela, Harper's magazine, 16 Sep. 2019
• Everyone else, from cabinet members to party functionaries, is kept on a long leash.
  — Constanze Stelzenmüller, Foreign Affairs, 20 Apr. 2021
• Proposal 5 was actually a bit of skilled electoral craft on the part of the city’s map functionaries.
  — Adam Gopnik, New Yorker, 4 Jan. 2026
• Hence the state attorneys general rise to check the president and his functionaries.
  — Charles Krauthammer, The Denver Post, 2 Mar. 2017
• Hence the state attorneys general rise to check the president and his functionaries.
  — Charles Krauthammer, Orange County Register, 3 Mar. 2017
• Unlike the party functionaries picked previously, all three grew up in the labor movement.
  — John Samuelsen, New York Daily News, 11 Feb. 2025
• Basically, the functionary told Green that the city wanted that streetlight installed, and Green had to pay for it.
  — Deroy Murdock, National Review, 30 Aug. 2019
• Government functionaries, including the lawyers sitting on the court, seem to have little idea how businesses look at things.
  — John Seiler, Orange County Register, 26 June 2024
• Hot guys could be found among the photographers, foreign journalists, and imposing functionaries of square jaw and evil hair.
  — Yiyun Li, Harper's Magazine, 23 Sep. 2024
• The Red leaders were driven by a righteousness that ran as deep as that of any Inquisition functionary.
  — Adam Hochschild, The Atlantic, 7 Oct. 2022
• Outside the courtrooms, however, doubts began to emerge as to whether functionaries should be prosecuted at all.
  — Dan Porat, Time, 25 Oct. 2019
• But one of the most startling moments of the book is a description of the tsunami by a government functionary named Teruo Konno.
  — Lisa Levy, New Republic, 9 Oct. 2017
• Evil is aided and abetted by the banality of institutions and their functionaries.
  — Literary Hub, 17 Oct. 2025
• For hours, reporters ignore the chamber and it’s left to tourists, government functionaries, and, of course, whoever happens to be speaking.
  — Ben Jacobs, Washington Examiner - Political News and Conservative Analysis About Congress, the President, and the Federal Government, 14 June 2024
• But Díaz-Canel is largely viewed by experts as a functionary, a loyalist without much true authority.
  — Ellen Uchimiya, CBS News, 19 May 2026
• Sonia was frequently ill, and Singh was unable to check the graft and theft perpetrated by allies and party functionaries.
  — Raghu Karnad, The Atlantic, 16 Dec. 2017
• Since then, there have been many more arrests—especially of regional functionaries at various levels.
  — Andrei Kolesnikov, Foreign Affairs, 8 Sep. 2025
• In the film, a functionary of the Spanish government waits at a remote South American outpost for new orders.
  — Mark Olsen, latimes.com, 29 Apr. 2018
• Soon, most of Stalin’s functionaries were killed in the purges, including Iofan’s neighbors and his friend and patron Rykov.
  — Deyan Sudjic, Foreign Affairs, 20 Dec. 2022
• Bigelow’s sympathetic eye for her functionaries risks the film being misread as an argument for more robust military funding.
  — Nicholas Quah, Vulture, 24 Oct. 2025
• In 1934, Sergei Kirov, a leading Bolshevik functionary, was shot dead in Leningrad.
  — The New Yorker, 18 Oct. 2021