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.
Examples of bureaucrat in a Sentence
Joel Zinberg, National Review, 12 July 2024
Now legal scholars are unsure how much of the U.S.’s administrative framework — decisions made by legions of experts and bureaucrats responsible for the daily operations of the federal government — could fall in the months and years to come.
—Jacob Bogage, Washington Post, 5 July 2024
Our unnamed narrator is a government bureaucrat hired to help one such time traveler adjust to the present as his live-in companion.
—Constance Grady, Vox, 28 June 2024
The Court’s decision upheld an important principle that goes far beyond gun control: Federal bureaucrats do not have the authority to invent new crimes by rewriting the law.
—Jacob Sullum, Orange County Register, 20 June 2024
See all Example Sentences for bureaucrat 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'bureaucrat.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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“Bureaucrat.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bureaucrat. Accessed 26 Jul. 2024.
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bureaucrat
noun
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