Other forms: mandarins
A mandarin is a small sweet citrus fruit that peels easily. A bag of mandarins, peel a mandarin, mandarin segments.
It is the parent of most easy-peel citrus — clementines, satsumas and tangerines are all mandarins or crosses of them — and it is one of the three original citrus species from which almost every other has been bred. The other senses come from the same word: a mandarin was a Chinese official, Mandarin is the language, and a mandarin in Britain is a senior civil servant.
1nounmandarinA small sweet citrus fruit that peels easily.
“She peeled a mandarin and shared the segments with her son.”
2nounseniorA senior official.
“The minister's plan was quietly blocked by the mandarins in the finance department.”
mandarin is a citrus fruit, or an official.
Portuguese mandarim came through Malay menteri from Sanskrit mantrin, a counsellor. The fruit is named after the officials' orange robes, so the civil servant came first and the satsuma second.
Proto-Indo-European
*men- (think)
Portuguese
mandarim
English, today
mandarin
Borrowed from Portuguese mandarim. From Portuguese mandarim, from Malay menteri, and its source, Sanskrit मन्त्रिन् (“minister, councillor”), from मन्त्र + -इन्.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Food & Drink