noun

• 1A man who has been castrated, especially (in the past) one employed to guard the women's living areas at an oriental court.

  ‘The Emperor would employ eunuchs as guards and servants in his Palace.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘At 18 she met a group of eunuchs, who dressed as women and sang and danced for a living.’
  • ‘He alone would have been carried across the immense first courtyard in a palanquin on the shoulders of eunuchs.’
  • ‘They believe that one becomes a eunuch through past demons.’
  • ‘He even occasionally allows his reader a salacious glimpse of his many and various belle-lettrist exchanges with flatterers, botherers, court eunuchs, visiting dignitaries and so on.’
  • ‘Ostracized by society and living in ghettos, eunuchs, popularly known as ‘hijras’ have nowhere to go but their own peers for shelter and succour.’
  • ‘All bars should be forced to employ eunuchs as waitresses.’
  • ‘The arts, of which the little lion dogs were considered a part, were entrusted to the palace courts' eunuchs and women, who competed to outdo each other in creating the most beautiful dog in order to gain the special favor of the emperors.’
  • ‘Another group who owed their existence in the Capital Region solely to the presence of the imperial court in Beijing were eunuchs.’
  • ‘Only in the domestic sphere did they remain predominant, and the top of that pyramid was now occupied by the court eunuchs.’
  • ‘I always felt a bit like a court eunuch when I was around him.’
  • ‘In the first reading Philip runs alongside the chariot of the Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the queen.’
  • ‘In the chain of the covenantal family, the foreigner has no past and the eunuch no future.’
  • ‘As the traditional sense of the word seems to imply, not every person referred to as a eunuch was necessarily castrated.’
  • ‘In this case it will be interesting to see if the unions can act as anything more than the castrated eunuchs that they are.’
  • ‘It's like a man who celebrates the day of his castration, as a eunuch.’
  • ‘The only men allowed to serve women in their private quarters were either eunuchs or men who lacked a sexual drive towards women.’
  • ‘While the eunuchs danced, men held money over the heads of people they wanted to honour.’

  1. 1.1An ineffectual person.
     ‘a nation of political eunuchs’
     More example sentences

     • ‘Failing to have prosecuted Labour over these scandals would probably have relegated ACT to United Future or Progressive levels of influence - political eunuchs.’
     • ‘The House of Commons, inundated by a quota system guaranteed to promote mediocrity, had become a government harem populated by political eunuchs.’
     • ‘And he ensured that he surrounded himself with political eunuchs.’
     • ‘This expression would render us both socially unique and a political eunuch.’
     • ‘Therefore I'm currently enjoying the status of a political eunuch.’
     • ‘Public choice, as an inclusive research programme, incorporates the presumption that persons do not readily become economic eunuchs as they shift from market to political participation.’
     • ‘People expect a political scientist to be objective, some kind of political eunuch.’
     • ‘If I have to read one more whining twenty-something eunuch complain about how politics just isn't relevant to his/her life, I'm gonna be sick.’