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
Jill Lepore, New Yorker, 12 May 2026
The legislation requests that the county’s top bureaucrat work to include the money in next year’s budget.
—Lucas Robinson, San Diego Union-Tribune, 7 May 2026
Their search for additional protagonists eventually led them to Dana Vitkovska, a Ukrainian transgender multidisciplinary artist living in Warsaw, whose journey to construct her identity on her own terms sets her at odds with Polish bureaucrats.
—Christopher Vourlias, Variety, 7 May 2026
Local communities, not federal bureaucrats, deciding what enters their own marketplace is not a radical idea.
—Jesse Plunkett, The Orlando Sentinel, 2 May 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 13 May. 2026.
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bureaucrat
noun
