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
Khaleda Rahman, MSNBC Newsweek, 4 Sep. 2025
Every head of every government in the world has been frustrated with bureaucrats.
—Ben Smith, semafor.com, 2 Sep. 2025
This will be a challenge for implant startups in crowded markets for migraine, bladder control, sleep apnea, where scientific or technical breakthroughs don’t matter to bureaucrats and bean counters.
—Naveen Rao, Forbes.com, 27 Aug. 2025
Reviewing fake CDLs experts say are sometimes issued by unscrupulous American trucking schools or bribed Mexican bureaucrats.
—Trevor Hughes, USA Today, 26 Aug. 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 Sep. 2025.
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bureaucrat
noun
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