A pair of tangentially-related words that catch my inner ear:

• factor — in the archaic sense of a business agent, someone who buys and sells for another person (as used by Poul Anderson (1926-2001) in some of his classic science-fiction stories of the "Polesotechnic League")
• factotum — an old term for a senior servant responsible for a variety of jobs (signature/id used by a comrade in another part of my beloved bureaucracy, many years ago)

Both factor and factotum are linked to a classic meaning of the word "secretary": a person who serves the government, handles correspondence, keeps secrets ...

TopicLanguage - 2004-11-04

(correlates: PitifulLosers, MuddlingThrough, Projectile Precision, ...)