factota
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Senses: examples: text: Before commencing our walks in Alexandria, we provided ourselves with two servants, who acted as our dragomen, cooks, and factota.
ref: 1842, E. Joy Morris, Notes of a Tour Through Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Arabia Petræa, to the Holy Land: Including a Visit to Athens, Sparta, Delphi, Cairo, Thebes, Mt. Sinai, Petra, &c., volume II, Philadelphia, Pa.: Carey and Hart, page 24:
text: On my return to the village of Heiligenblut, which is the starting-point of all excursions into that region of snow, I made inquiries of the factota of the village; of the hostess of the inn, who is the chief personage in all Tyrolean villages; the priest; and the telegraph operatress.
ref: 1889 September 28, S. H. Chapman, “Notes on the Prevalence of Diphtheria at High Altitudes”, in Hobart Amory Hare, editor, The Medical News. A Weekly Medical Journal., volume LV, number 13, Philadelphia, Pa.: Lea Brothers & Co., page 345:
text: Mozart and his librettists have created the dissidents of the day, the factota of the public-at-large. And, mischievous though they may be as domestics, they have served the opera world exceedingly well for over 170 years.
ref: 1953, Opera News, page 27:
text: He draws much of his remuneration from the company in the form of goods and services paid for by the firm—his house and automobile, his machiai (geisha house) and club bills, and six personal servants, including two tobi (a colorful roughneck) who are bodyguards and factota; […]
ref: 1979, John C. Pelzel, “Factory Life in Japan and China Today”, in Albert M[orton] Craig, editor, Japan: A Comparative View, Princeton University Press, page 406:
text: The agents suspected that the appellees were driving stolen vehicles, not that they served as factota of illegal aliens.
ref: 1985, The Federal Reporter, page 289:
text: These blacks are dressed according to white code, seen acting in white-imposed roles (butlers, drivers, plantation laborers). They register as factota representing the will of the silent and invisible white master.
ref: 1995, The Faulkner Journal, page 39:
text: The presence of the factota of the new world order on Egyptian soil will be seen as approval […] of Cairo’s indiscriminate war against its own Islamic extremists.
ref: 1996 April 1, “Sharm School”, in New Republic, page 8; quoted in Bryan A[ndrew] Garner, Garner’s Modern English Usage, fourth edition, Oxford University Press, 2016, →ISBN, page 376:
text: All of the attempts were made by factota who didn’t reveal they were working on a book for Sommers.
ref: 2000 May 19, Alex Beam, “Atlantic Piece Takes Swipe at Harvard Prof”, in Boston Globe, page D1; quoted in Bryan A[ndrew] Garner, Garner’s Modern English Usage, fourth edition, Oxford University Press, 2016, →ISBN, page 376:
text: The harm done to the Ukrainian population by the Poles, their leaseholders, and their factota the Jews is mentioned (1:17, p. 48).
ref: 2003, Journal of Ukrainian Studies, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, page 448:
text: The other stereotype, summoned in his case by the silver bell, is – of course – Jeeves. Other nations have their Sancho Panzas (peasantly shrewd), their Figaros (here, there, everywhere), their Sam Spade ‘sidekicks’, their valets (to whom no man is hero), their factota, their ‘celebrity’ pas, their Passepartouts, their Moscas. The ‘witty servant’ (smarter than his master) can be traced back to the Latin dramatist Terence, but only one nation has the omnicompetent butler, the gentleman’s gentleman.
ref: 2018, John Sutherland, The Good Brexiteer’s Guide to English Lit, Reaktion Books, →ISBN:
text: Most stewards were aged under 30 and were trained in cooking, serving and even how to survive on an island in case of emergency, including what food to eat and what not to eat. They were referred to somewhat dismissively in an early in-house history as ‘flight butlers and general factota’ but they would become, as the history admitted, ‘one of the most highly praised features of Pan American service’.
ref: 2021, Bryce Evans, Food and Aviation in the Twentieth Century: The Pan American Ideal, Bloomsbury Academic, →ISBN:
glosses: plural of factotum