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, 30 Apr. 2025
Despite all of his ambition as a reformer, Francis often had to battle a secret internecine war with Vatican bureaucrats who tried undermining his efforts.
—Danielle Chemtob, Forbes.com, 24 Apr. 2025
Those readers included a wide variety of people, from bureaucrats in the capital, to scribal students in the provinces, to kings in Nubia (modern Sudan).
—The Editors, JSTOR Daily, 22 Apr. 2025
Sinister is the word for Breaux’s Brenner, a character that melds the mad scientist with the cutthroat bureaucrat, sprinkled with a touch of the child-groomer.
—Greg Evans, Deadline, 22 Apr. 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 6 May. 2025.
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bureaucrat
noun
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