"officialese" meaning in English

See officialese in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

IPA: /ə.fɪ.ʃəˈliːz/ [UK] Forms: officialeses [plural]
Etymology: From official + -ese. Etymology templates: {{suffix|en|official|ese}} official + -ese Head templates: {{en-noun|~}} officialese (countable and uncountable, plural officialeses)
  1. The typical language of officials or official documents; legalistic and pompous language. Tags: countable, uncountable Categories (topical): Jargon Synonyms: bureaucratese Related terms: legalese

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for officialese meaning in English (1.8kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "official",
        "3": "ese"
      },
      "expansion": "official + -ese",
      "name": "suffix"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From official + -ese.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "officialeses",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "~"
      },
      "expansion": "officialese (countable and uncountable, plural officialeses)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with topic categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms suffixed with -ese",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Jargon",
          "orig": "en:Jargon",
          "parents": [
            "Language",
            "Communication",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2011, Thomas Penn, Winter King, Penguin, published 2012, page 263",
          "text": "These were men, the chronicler continued, who ‘spoke pleasantly’, in the smooth officialese that most of Henry's counsellors were accustomed to deploy […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The typical language of officials or official documents; legalistic and pompous language."
      ],
      "id": "en-officialese-en-noun-lYRxP~CD",
      "links": [
        [
          "official",
          "official"
        ],
        [
          "document",
          "document"
        ],
        [
          "legalistic",
          "legalistic"
        ],
        [
          "pompous",
          "pompous"
        ]
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "legalese"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "bureaucratese"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "countable",
        "uncountable"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ə.fɪ.ʃəˈliːz/",
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "officialese"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "official",
        "3": "ese"
      },
      "expansion": "official + -ese",
      "name": "suffix"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From official + -ese.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "officialeses",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "~"
      },
      "expansion": "officialese (countable and uncountable, plural officialeses)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "legalese"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English 4-syllable words",
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
        "English lemmas",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms suffixed with -ese",
        "English terms with IPA pronunciation",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English uncountable nouns",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned",
        "en:Jargon"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2011, Thomas Penn, Winter King, Penguin, published 2012, page 263",
          "text": "These were men, the chronicler continued, who ‘spoke pleasantly’, in the smooth officialese that most of Henry's counsellors were accustomed to deploy […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The typical language of officials or official documents; legalistic and pompous language."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "official",
          "official"
        ],
        [
          "document",
          "document"
        ],
        [
          "legalistic",
          "legalistic"
        ],
        [
          "pompous",
          "pompous"
        ]
      ],
      "tags": [
        "countable",
        "uncountable"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ə.fɪ.ʃəˈliːz/",
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "bureaucratese"
    }
  ],
  "word": "officialese"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.