Definition of bureaucrat
- goverment bureaucrats
the bureaucrats at the town hall seem to think that we need a building permit to build a tree house
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'bureaucrat.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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.
: a person who is one of the people who run a government or big company and who does everything according to the rules of that government or company : a person who is part of a bureaucracy
See words that rhyme with bureaucrat Thesaurus: All synonyms and antonyms for bureaucrat Spanish Central: Translation of bureaucrat Nglish: Translation of bureaucrat for Spanish speakers Britannica English: Translation of bureaucrat for Arabic speakers
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