Sir Humphrey

English

Etymology

From the fictional character Sir Humphrey Appleby, a self-important, Oxford-educated civil servant first depicted in the 1980 premiere of the BBC television series Yes Minister.

Noun

Sir Humphrey (plural Sir Humphreys)

1. (UK) A high-ranking bureaucrat, particularly one who is elitist and deliberately obscure.
   • 2012 May 22, Simon English, “Wanted: a Sir Humphrey for funds to hide behind”, in The London Evening Standard‎^[1]:

     Wanted: a Sir Humphrey for funds to hide behind
     [...]
     Key skills required:
     — Ability to move head vertically rather than horizontally when asked to promote anything desired by the fund management companies who pay your salary
     — Ability to confuse fact with fiction via misleading random statistics (a mathematics skill would be helpful here)
     — Ability to pull wool over the regulators’ eyes while maintaining a straight, poker-like face
     — Ability to come up with new reasons à la Humphrey from Yes Minister, as to why any progressive change that might help the consumer is currently unworkable.

   • 2013 December 31, Jonathan Freedland, “New Year honours should reward achievement, not cronyism”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:

     Among the most senior honours, the dominance of Sir Humphreys and courtiers is striking. There are gongs galore for the deputy director of this Whitehall department and the head of strategy group at that one, to say nothing of the pile of baubles handed to those who serve the Windsors.

   • 2023 August 9, Nigel Harris, “Comment: Disinterested and dishonest”, in RAIL, number 989, page 3:

     Obsessed only with cost, 'Sir Humphrey' saw that Transport for London 'got away' with ticket office closures on the Tube with only minor public pushback and miscalculated that it could do the same on the national network. This assumption backfired spectacularly.