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
Alexis Coe, MSNBC Newsweek, 17 Oct. 2025
Amid the aftermath, as aid groups and Taliban bureaucrats were assisting those injured and left homeless by the earthquake, other Taliban officials twice suspended most internet and cellular reception throughout Afghanistan, complicating aid efforts.
—NPR, 14 Oct. 2025
In the first two years of the pandemic, negotiating with bureaucrats in person was impossible, but getting to them virtually wasn’t always easy either — ironically because of the very bandwidth issues that 2Africa was trying to address.
—Samanth Subramanian, The Dial, 14 Oct. 2025
One is a veteran operator and government bureaucrat.
—Jessie Yeung, CNN Money, 3 Oct. 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 24 Oct. 2025.
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bureaucrat
noun
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