Polonius

noun

noun ·4 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A busybody who makes poor judgments.

    "From the winged words of corporation executives, from the pulpits of economic Poloniuses, the same evil is identified and decried: the collapse of productivity. But are the sermons total myths?"

Example

More examples

"From the winged words of corporation executives, from the pulpits of economic Poloniuses, the same evil is identified and decried: the collapse of productivity. But are the sermons total myths?"

Etymology

After the character of Polonius in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.