Dancing To The Beat of Your Own Panjandrum

Today's word is panjandrum which is a noun meaning an important personage or pretentious official.

Is this totally different from my recent use of grand poobah?  I think not. In my book grand poobah is far more descriptive.  Additionally it is notable for originating from the musical The Mikado which is a delightful production in which I was once forcibly cast. I say forcibly since I was cast as Yum Yum, one of three female leads, when at the time there were only three girls in my whole class.

But we looked adorable in kimonos and obis.

Here is a quote from the dramatist Samuel Foote (graduate of Oxford University) using today's word:

So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. "What! No soap?" So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber: and there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyulies, and the grand panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing the game of catch-as-catch-can till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.

When I first read that quote I thought it was a total load of worthless balderdash* but then I researched it a little more and found out this: good ole Foote came up with that gem when some pompous dude named Charles Macklin said he could memorize anything.  So...me thinks someone got served!

Macklin fancied himself a panjandrum
With memorization as his niche.
But challenges he shied away from
And Foote made Macklin his bitch.

* Please, do be totally impressed by my vocabulary.  But I learned this word while starring in our middle school production of The Phantom Toolbooth.  It was one of my few one-word lines.  And it seems a bit more difficult to be impressed by a kid in black leotard whose missing front tooth makes her lisp on the single line "Baldersa-th."