Grand Poobah

Grand Poobah is a term derived from the name of the haughty character Pooh-Bah in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado (1885).[1] In this comic opera, Pooh-Bah holds numerous exalted offices, including "First Lord of the Treasury, Lord Chief Justice, Commander-in-Chief, Lord High Admiral ... Archbishop ... Lord Mayor" and "Lord High Everything Else". The name has come to be used as a mocking title for someone self-important or locally high-ranking and who either exhibits an inflated self-regard or who has limited authority while taking impressive titles.[2]

Rutland Barrington, the original Pooh-Bah
  • The term "Grand Poobah" was used recurringly on the television show The Flintstones as the name of a high-ranking elected position in a secret society, the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes. The main characters, Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble, were members of the lodge. The lodge is a spoof of secret societies and men's clubs like the Freemasons, the Shriners, the Elks Club and the Moose Lodge.[3]
  • The character Howard Cunningham on the TV series Happy Days was a Grand Poobah of Leopard Lodge No. 462 in Milwaukee.[4]
gollark: The issue with pascal's wager isn't exactly the low-probability good outcome but that it discounts every other possibility ever.
gollark: OH BEE I fell victim to it.
gollark: If you die and get frozen, that information is preserved a lot better and might be readable later. Nobody actually knows what the future is going to be like in terms of ability to do anything with this, but it's better than ~0 chance.
gollark: If you die in the normal, uncool way, you're *definitely* dead and the information in your brain is rapidly irretrievable.
gollark: What?

See also

References
  1. This character was based, in part, on James Planché's Baron Factotum, the "Great-Grand-Lord-High-Everything" from The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood (1840). Williams (2010), p. 267
  2. "Pooh-bah", Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, accessed 14 June 2009
  3. "Loyal Order of Water Buffalo", Grand Lodge Freemasonry site, 8 April 2004, accessed 14 September 2009
  4. Holmes, Linda. "RIP Tom Bosley, One Of TV's Great Dads", National Public Radio, 19 October 2010, accessed 6 March 2018. See, e.g. episode #150, "Burlesque", aired 6 November 1979

Sources
  • Williams, Carolyn (2010). Gilbert and Sullivan: Gender, Genre, Parody. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-14804-6.


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