Definition of BUREAUCRATS

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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

the bureaucrats at the town hall seem to think that we need a building permit to build a tree house

Recent Examples on the Web

They were accused bribing a state bureaucrat into giving the university government subsidies in exchange for admitting his son and subsequently indicted. — Jennie Neufeld, Vox, "Vox Sentences: An all-out brawl," 8 Aug. 2018 No one should expect otherwise, but the dedication of high-level government bureaucrats is not the issue. — George Melloan, WSJ, "‘The Fifth Risk’ Review: Managing the Unmanageable," 1 Oct. 2018 And meanwhile, former CIA Director Brennan also freaking out tonight feeling the heat, actually called on government bureaucrats to defy the president's orders. — Fox News, "Women who know Kavanaugh rush to his defense," 18 Sep. 2018 Because you just get rid of the government, basically, like thousands of government bureaucrats. — Recode Staff, Recode, "Journalist and author Annie Lowrey wants you to understand that universal basic income isn’t crazy," 16 July 2018 The extent of the state's independence from federal bureaucrats is even more relevant during Donald Trump's presidency. — Dino Grandoni, Washington Post, "The Energy 202: Supreme Court to rehear moose-hunting case with wider implications for Alaska," 19 June 2018 The late 1980s and early 1990s were full of alarms from trade officials and experts about how Japanese bureaucrats were plotting to control the world. — Peter Landers, WSJ, "The Old U.S. Trade War With Japan Looms Over Today’s Dispute With China," 13 Dec. 2018 The president should under no circumstance fire this beleaguered bureaucrat. — Fox News, "Sen. Graham: Allegations against Kavanaugh are collapsing," 24 Sep. 2018 At first, the Russian Chess Federation, or RCF, supported Ilyumzhinov with some reservations, but now RCF has dropped him like a hot potato and is putting forward career Russian bureaucrat Arkady Dvorkovich. — Chris Chase, BostonGlobe.com, "Chess notes," 7 July 2018

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.