sinecure
in a sentence

The mayor was accused of giving her friends sinecure positions in the government, where they received high salaries for doing very little work.
sinecure = a paid job that involves minimal duties

After retiring from her successful career, Jane was offered a sinecure position on the board of directors, allowing her to continue to contribute her expertise without the demands of a full-time job.
sinecure = paid job that involves minimal duties

After confessing to these things they had been pardoned, reinstated in the Party, and given posts which were in fact sinecures but which sounded important. (source) George Orwell, 1984, 1949
sinecures = paid positions that involves minimal duties

There is no such position officially, but it sometimes came into existence through necessity, and was the opposite of a sinecure.† (source) John Knowles, A Separate Peace, 1959

His job was not a sinecure.† (source)

Ser Ilyn's appointment had been a wedding gift from Robert Baratheon to the father of his bride, a sinecure to compensate Payne for the tongue he'd lost in the service of House Lannister.† (source)

He set up a government within the government-by moving the decimal points in appropriations and salaries, sending his speechless enemies to tiny towns in Calabria, and rewarding sycophants with sinecures.† (source)

He does have a job in the company library, an undemanding sinecure where he can do a lot of reading without bothering anyone, and occasionally he does a little research for one of the legitimate biologists on the staff.† (source) William Styron, Sophie's Choice, 1976

The average working week was now about twenty hours— but those twenty hours were no sinecure.† (source) Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood's End, 1953

He even had a job, a sinecure, more highly-paid than his old job had been. (source) George Orwell, 1984, 1949
sinecure = a paid position that involves minimal duties

That he entered; and he learnt the rules of the game so well and played it so assiduously that he emerged at the age of sixty with a Lady Margaret for wife, with a knighthood, with a sinecure of some sort, three sons, and a country house.† (source)

show 19 more with this conextual meaning

Life was not a task to him, but a sinecure.† (source) George Eliot, Adam Bede, 1859

By some writers this office is called a sinecure.† (source) Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851

She tried to have him appointed to the postmastership, which, since all the work was done by assistants, was the one sinecure in town, the one reward for political purity.† (source) Sinclair Lewis, Main Street, 1920

He looked as though he did not take his salary from the public company, whose servant he was, for a sinecure.† (source) Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot, 1900

The eldest son was following in his father's footsteps only in another department, and was already approaching that stage in the service at which a similar sinecure would be reached.† (source)

I walked in a world of their invention—they had no occasion whatever to draw upon mine; so that my time was taken only with being, for them, some remarkable person or thing that the game of the moment required and that was merely, thanks to my superior, my exalted stamp, a happy and highly distinguished sinecure.† (source)

Were he a gentleman doing his best to get a pension or a sinecure instead of sweeping a crossing, nobody would blame him; for deciding that so long as the alternative lies between living mainly at the expense of the community and allowing the community to live mainly at his, it would be folly to accept what is to him personally the greater of the two evils.† (source)

The something appeared vaguely to his imagination as a private secretaryship or a sinecure of some sort.† (source) George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, 1912

That perhaps it was a little indecent that the principal registrar of all, whose duty it was to find the public, constantly resorting to this place, all needful accommodation, should be an enormous sinecurist in virtue of that post (and might be, besides, a clergyman, a pluralist, the holder of a staff in a cathedral, and what not), — while the public was put to the inconvenience of which we had a specimen every afternoon when the office was busy, and which we knew to be quite monstrous.† (source)

CHAPTER III: RELATES HOW OLIVER TWIST WAS VERY NEAR GETTING A PLACE WHICH WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN A SINECURE† (source) Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, 1838

His stable services were merely a sinecure, and consisted simply in a daily care and inspection, and directing an under-servant in his duties; for Marie St. Clare declared that she could not have any smell of the horses about him when he came near her, and that he must positively not be put to any service that would make him unpleasant to her, as her nervous system was entirely inadequate to any trial of that nature; one snuff of anything disagreeable being, according to her account, quite sufficient to close the scene, and put an end to all her earthly trials at once.† (source)

In short, I went on thus for a long time (I may say it without boasting), faithfully minding my business, till it became more and more evident that my townsmen would not after all admit me into the list of town officers, nor make my place a sinecure with a moderate allowance.† (source) Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

Those who have succeeded in procuring this admirable materialism have the joy of feeling themselves irresponsible, and of thinking that they can devour everything without uneasiness,—places, sinecures, dignities, power, whether well or ill acquired, lucrative recantations, useful treacheries, savory capitulations of conscience,—and that they shall enter the tomb with their digestion accomplished.† (source) Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, 1862

Miss Briggs was not formally dismissed, but her place as companion was a sinecure and a derision; and her company was the fat spaniel in the drawing-room, or occasionally the discontented Firkin in the housekeeper's closet.† (source)

Some laughed; some said, by way of complete excuse, that the post was virtually a sinecure, and any fool who could spell his name was good enough for it; some, and these the more solemn political oracles, said that Decimus did wisely to strengthen himself, and that the sole constitutional purpose of all places within the gift of Decimus, was, that Decimus should strengthen himself.† (source) Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, 1857

Indeed, she has not yet recovered her equanimity on the subject, though it is now nearly three hours since dinner, and the house-floor is perfectly clean again; as clean as everything else in that wonderful house-place, where the only chance of collecting a few grains of dust would be to climb on the salt-coffer, and put your finger on the high mantel-shelf on which the glittering brass candlesticks are enjoying their summer sinecure; for at this time of year, of course, every one goes to bed while it is yet light, or at least light enough to discern the outline of objects after you have bruised your shins against them.† (source) George Eliot, Adam Bede, 1859

Be it said, that in this vocation of whaling, sinecures are unknown; dignity and danger go hand in hand; till you get to be Captain, the higher you rise the harder you toil.† (source) Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851

and clerks of seats), should not be obliged to spend a little of that money, in finding a reasonably safe place for the important documents which all classes of people were compelled to hand over to them, whether they would or no. That, perhaps, it was a little unjust, that all the great offices in this great office should be magnificent sinecures, while the unfortunate working-clerks in the cold dark room upstairs were the worst rewarded, and the least considered men, doing important services, in London.† (source)

All the Sinecurists.† (source)

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sinecurein a sentence

sinecure
in a sentence