I bumped into this word last week in a CNN opinion piece. When I first saw it, I thought, WTF? Then I googled it and thought, surely I encountered this in high school American History.

Alas, high school was juvenile; I skipped a lot. I’m sure I made my parents wonder if they should have let the academic gurus at Oakhurst Elementary bump me from 3rd to 5th. My father was bumped two grades and was tortured as only school children can torture. He did not want me to suffer the same fate.

So, here I was looking at this weird, wonderful word that I had to find a definition for.

In a sentence: I lean pretty far left, politically, however, there is no way in hell I’ve ever become an apparatchik.

In another sentence: I have a healthy distrust of big business, so I’m not likely to be a Silicon Valley apparatchik.