functionary
Example Sentences
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President Masoud Pezeshkian is a functionary, selected in haste in 2024 to replace Ebrahim Raisi, whose helicopter crashed into a mountain.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 12, 2026
The piece suggests this physical restraint conveyed an image of a cautious functionary rather than a dynamic leader capable of governing California during turbulent times.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 23, 2026
One of my professors, Harry Wexler, had been a young functionary under the midcentury mayor-for-life Dick Lee.
From Slate ● Sep. 21, 2025
Adolf Ziegler, the Nazi functionary charged with overseeing the exhibition, perceived no ambiguity.
From Salon ● Jun. 8, 2025
Finally, we were escorted down the hall by a nervous little functionary, who kept checking his watch and motioning for us to hurry along.
From "In the Time of the Butterflies" by Julia Alvarez
Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and other Kremlin functionaries live in highly-secure estates near the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Highway west of Moscow, a suburban community dubbed “Moscow Beverly Hills.”
From Salon ● Mar. 24, 2026
The novel echoes thinkers like Hannah Arendt in pointing out how true-believing functionaries, the butt of ridicule in “normal” times, can help subsume all reason and decency to usurp a compliant and too-comfortable ruling class.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 12, 2025
The most important people in the country all along were the rule-followers—corporate attorneys, regional judges, visa-processing functionaries, tax assessors, customs officials, food and drug regulators.
From Slate ● Sep. 19, 2025
After the consumer safety and environmental movements in the 1960s, a backlash emerged from businesses, where critics argued that government functionaries who were not accountable to voters were issuing regulations whose costs outweighed their benefits.
From New York Times ● Jan. 17, 2024
Although prison guards and their legitimate children belong by blood to the core class, they are fringe functionaries locked away for most of their working lives in the freezing hinterlands.
From "Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West" by Blaine Harden
Vocabulary lists containing functionary
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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The Left Hand of Darkness
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Around the World in Eighty Days
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