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
Meilan Solly, Smithsonian Magazine, 21 Nov. 2024
Power Redistribution The president-elect plans to diminish the influence of federal bureaucrats and regulations across various economic sectors, portraying regulatory cuts as a remedy for economic growth.
—Thomas G. Moukawsher, Newsweek, 6 Nov. 2024
Who scrounged to build her home and start a small business, struggled to meet a payroll and was forced to deal with clueless bureaucrats.
—Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times, 27 Oct. 2024
The British focused on the repressed anger that many ordinary Germans felt toward Nazi bureaucrats.
—Peter Pomerantsev, Foreign Affairs, 11 Oct. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Bureaucrat.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bureaucrat. Accessed 15 Dec. 2024.
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bureaucrat
noun
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