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.
Synonyms of bureaucrat
Examples of bureaucrat in a Sentence
Kaitlyn Tiffany,
The Atlantic,
20 June 2026
The burly bureaucrat in dark slacks and a navy sweater has a scruffy beard and the frazzled look of an anonymous factotum thrust into the limelight.
—
Joshua Hunt,
Vanity Fair,
17 June 2026
Szabo, an otherwise inconspicuous former bureaucrat, helped to unite two distinct networks with overlapping ambitions.
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Alex Cuadros,
ProPublica,
16 June 2026
There is an unmistakable feeling that a great mass of fans are priced out, or fenced out, while wealthy sponsors and venal bureaucrats get the benefits.
—
Louisa Thomas,
New Yorker,
13 June 2026
See All Example Sentences for bureaucrat
Cite this Entry
“Bureaucrat.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bureaucrat. Accessed 26 Jun. 2026.
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bureaucrat
noun
