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
Jessie Yeung, CNN Money, 3 Oct. 2025
Meanwhile, Edwards retreated to the Dark Forest in Germany with the actual nuclear bearings, and reached out to his Navy SEAL buddy, James Reece (Chris Pratt), to share his mindset of how war bureaucrats have set up real soldiers to fail in their efforts to keep the free world safe.
—Demetrius Patterson, HollywoodReporter, 30 Sep. 2025
Nazi bureaucrats entered each bank and inventoried the contents of safes, strongrooms, and vaults.
—Christopher C. Gorham
september 29, Literary Hub, 29 Sep. 2025
This is a story involving how a PA lawsuit exposed extremely questionable conduct by one career bureaucrat at the National Security Agency (NSA).
—Patrick Eddington, Oc Register, 25 Sep. 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 10 Oct. 2025.
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bureaucrat
noun
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