bureaucrat
noun
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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
Michael Schuman, The Atlantic, 3 Jan. 2026
Perd interviewed just about everyone on the Parks core cast across his six-season run on the show, from Amy Poehler's type-A bureaucrat Leslie Knope to Aziz Ansari's slick hustler Tom Haverford.
—Ryan Coleman, Entertainment Weekly, 29 Dec. 2025
The infusion of public money will boost the chances of luring private investment, but this is fundamentally a project pushed by politicians and bureaucrats rather than the marketplace.
—The Editorial Board, Oc Register, 23 Dec. 2025
Thankfully, Iran already has online platforms, created by nongovernmental organizations, that citizens can use to register complaints about policies and bureaucrats.
—Mohammad Javad Zarif, Foreign Affairs, 22 Dec. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Bureaucrat.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bureaucrat. Accessed 7 Jan. 2026.
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bureaucrat
noun
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