Thesaurus results for FUNCTIONARIES

functionaries

noun

plural of functionary

as in officials

a person who holds a public office spoke to high-ranking functionaries at the embassy in the hopes that they could help

Synonyms & Similar Words

Relevance

as in bureaucrats

a worker in a government agency the faceless functionaries at the Internal Revenue Service

Synonyms & Similar Words

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Recent Examples of functionaries Both Washington and Mexico City have launched crackdowns against a complex web of unscrupulous functionaries, front companies and document fraudsters, among others. — Foreign Correspondent, Los Angeles Times, 3 Aug. 2026 To the extent that their fellow-citizens refer to them at all, our government functionaries are perceived not as active agents of change but as inert, self-protecting obstructions. — The New Yorker, New Yorker, 4 July 2026 More than funding, though, is needed transparency by IDNR functionaries with marina boaters and Winthrop Harbor officials. — Charles Selle, Chicago Tribune, 26 Jan. 2026 Their prestige suffers because it is conflated in the public’s mind with long lines at the DMV, fastidious building inspectors, parking tickets—the stuff of local functionaries. — Franklin Foer, The Atlantic, 11 Jan. 2026 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 Evil is aided and abetted by the banality of institutions and their functionaries. — Literary Hub, 17 Oct. 2025 Since then, there have been many more arrests—especially of regional functionaries at various levels. — Andrei Kolesnikov, Foreign Affairs, 8 Sep. 2025 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

Recent Examples of Synonyms for functionaries

Noun

The ‘next step’ On a sunny September day last year in the Chinese port city of Ningbo, not far from Shanghai, higher-ups from shipping company Sea Legend mingled with local transport officials at a port terminal.

— Simone McCarthy, CNN Money, 14 Aug. 2026
Overnight a shift in wind direction raised the risk that the flames could reach Gey by morning, prompting officials to order the initial evacuation.

— ABC News, ABC News, 14 Aug. 2026

Definition of officials

Noun

The department said officers responded to a home Friday night in the area of South Main and Mann streets, where they were told that a man climbed through a window and assaulted someone who lives there.

— Logan Hall, CBS News, 17 Aug. 2026
Hegseth has aggressively moved to reshape the military's senior ranks, removing or sidelining more than two dozen senior officers, without explanation, including a number of women and minorities.

— Steven Beynon, ABC News, 17 Aug. 2026

Definition of officers

Noun

More damaging, employees gradually learn that raising concerns means navigating the leader's emotional reaction before addressing the actual issue.

— Rodger Dean Duncan, Forbes.com, 13 Aug. 2026
Or, that some of those same city employees would set up web cameras so that hundreds of residents could watch the baby falcons grow up in their nest on a ledge outside City Hall.

— Addison Wright, Chicago Tribune, 13 Aug. 2026

Definition of employees

Noun

The aid workers who once regularly visited her village to help pregnant women had stopped coming, after foreign aid cuts by the United States shuttered a program aimed at saving mothers’ and babies’ lives.

— ABC News, ABC News, 13 Aug. 2026
The idea is for tech workers to live and work in the same building.

— John Ramos, CBS News, 13 Aug. 2026

Definition of workers

Noun

There are several oranges, mandarins, a lemon and finger lime.

— Tom MacCubbin, The Orlando Sentinel, 15 Aug. 2026
And as Netanyahu’s coalitions hardened Schleien’s programs became edgier, skewering Netanyahu sycophants in the Likud Party, anti-élitist demagogues, cultic settlers, and rabbinic mandarins.

— Bernard Avishai, New Yorker, 11 Aug. 2026