poobah
/ˈpuːbɑː/noun
poobah is a noun meaning “A person who holds multiple offices or positions of power at the same time” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-O-O-B-A-H, and it appears about once in every 30 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of poobah is poobahs.
What does poobah mean?
noun
- 1
A person who holds multiple offices or positions of power at the same time.
- 2
A leader or other important person.
- 3
A pompous, self-important person.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce poobah?
- /ˈpuːbɑː/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-poobah.ogg, En-au-poobah.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of poobah
- poobahs plural
- pooh bah
- pooh-bah
- poo bah
- poo-bah
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is poobah?
Poobah appears about once in every 30 million words in written English, the 167,786th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does poobah come from?
From Pooh-Bah, a comic character in the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta The Mikado (1885), formed as pooh + bah, both expressing contempt. The character of W. S. Gilbert's libretto is preceded by the character Pish-Tush-Pooh-Bah (described as “haughty”) in “King Borriah Bungalee Boo” (1866), one of the Bab Ballads, with pish and tush being two other terms of contempt.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).