sinecurist

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si·ne·cure

(sī′nĭ-kyo͝or′, sĭn′ĭ-)

1. A position or office that requires little or no work but provides a salary.

2. Archaic An ecclesiastical benefice not attached to the spiritual duties of a parish.

[From Medieval Latin (beneficium) sine cūrā, (benefice) without cure (of souls) : Latin sine, without + Latin cūrā, ablative of cūra, care; see cure.]

si′ne·cur·ism n.

si′ne·cur′ist n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

References in classic literature ?

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.

View in context

"The essential principle of property being to assure to all persons what they have produced by their labour and accumulated by their abstinence," it is hard to apply this doctrine to the "raw material of the earth." (42) Alluding to the Lockean account, Mill notes, "In no sound theory of private property was it ever contemplated that the proprietor of land should be merely a sinecurist quartered on it" rather than a legitimate improver.

Economic freedom and human flourishing: perspectives from political philosophy

14 that the PC "is not wasting any time" in its eagerness to end the dominance of Lugo and the APC, and she described the dictatorship's old party as solely "responsible for having created, during its six decades of government, a sinecurist and corrupt bureaucracy."