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
William Pesek, Forbes.com, 30 June 2025
Their departures offered a reminder of the essential imbalance between the bureaucrats’ enduring stake in the structure of government and the fleeting and contingent interest of Musk’s team.
—Benjamin Wallace-Wells, New Yorker, 16 June 2025
Agents die in the field; bureaucrats toast their memory over glasses of port.
—Rav Grewal-Kök
june 16, Literary Hub, 16 June 2025
Despite that reassuring distinction, that ramp was closed, because as soon as the kids figure out how to have some good life-threatening fun, a bureaucrat comes along to spoil it.
—Justin Davidson, Curbed, 16 June 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 5 Jul. 2025.
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bureaucrat
noun
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