bureaucrat
noun
Did you know?
In French, a bureau is a desk, so bureaucracy means basically "government by people at desks". Despite the bad-mouthing they often get, partly because they usually have to stick so close to the rules, bureaucrats do almost all the day-to-day work that keeps a government running. The idea of a bureaucracy is to split up the complicated task of governing a large country into smaller jobs that can be handled by specialists. Bureaucratic government is nothing new; the Roman empire had an enormous and complex bureaucracy, with the bureaucrats at lower levels reporting to bureaucrats above them, and so on up to the emperor himself.
Examples of bureaucrat in a Sentence
Andrei Yakovlev, Foreign Affairs, 16 May 2025
The Empire is full of bickering bureaucrats, which is fun to watch though bad for getting the Death Star done in a timely manner, and Darth Vader power walks into scenes that both undermine his icon status yet also cement it.
—Brian Truitt, USA Today, 4 May 2025
All the more reason why a consortium of the world’s bureaucrats are determined to stop Zsa-zsa by artificially inflating the price of bashable rivets.
—David Ehrlich, IndieWire, 18 May 2025
Unwaveringly prepared, collegial, sharp and measured, Prevost impressed as an uber bureaucrat.
—Mitra Taj, New York Times, 17 May 2025
See All Example Sentences for bureaucrat
Cite this Entry
“Bureaucrat.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bureaucrat. Accessed 10 Jun. 2025.
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bureaucrat
noun
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