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
Letters To The Editor, The Mercury News, 15 Mar. 2024
Smyth was an American physicist, diplomat, and bureaucrat who was instrumental in the early development of nuclear energy.
—Rachel Cormack, Robb Report, 5 Mar. 2024
Ashok Lavasa, a top bureaucrat in India, the head of the national election commission, had written a book about his father.
—Hazlitt, 28 Feb. 2024
The fact that the small-time local bureaucrat — and not the investors or the lawyers — had suffered the most severely spoke to the real-life consequences of financial fraud, which often seems so abstract and opaque.
—Jesse Barron, New York Times, 9 Feb. 2024
Senate President Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, said in a statement that Hobbs ultimately sided with bureaucrats instead of Arizonans.
—Stacey Barchenger, The Arizona Republic, 18 Mar. 2024
On their paradoxical mission to help the Nigerian state by proving how corrupt its bureaucrats really were, the agents were accused of coloring outside the lines of the law.
—Jesse Barron, New York Times, 9 Feb. 2024
Armed groups thrive under fragile governments, and their networks include cabinet ministers, parliamentarians, judges, senior bureaucrats, and civil society organizers.
—Renad Mansour, Foreign Affairs, 26 Mar. 2024
Townspeople, soldiers, and bureaucrats alike all wear the split-toe shoe.
—Hannah Jackson, Vogue, 20 Mar. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'bureaucrat.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near bureaucrat
Cite this Entry
“Bureaucrat.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bureaucrat. Accessed 23 Apr. 2024.
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bureaucrat
noun
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