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
Elizabeth Cobbs / Made By History, TIME, 19 June 2024
Andor may feel smaller than most other Star Wars titles by focusing on fringe planets and small-time Imperial bureaucrats rather than Grand Moffs and Jedi.
—Rafael Motamayor, Vulture, 4 June 2024
The United States never joined, as the globe’s leading power with military forces arrayed worldwide through a network of alliances and treaties, Washington was wary of subjecting American troops in combat situations to the second guessing of international bureaucrats from The Hague.
—New York Daily News Editorial Board, New York Daily News, 22 May 2024
Enforcement of basic policy is non-existent with McCabe’s bureaucrats and administrators.
—For Carroll County Times, Baltimore Sun, 21 Apr. 2024
See all Example Sentences for bureaucrat 
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.
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Cite this Entry
“Bureaucrat.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bureaucrat. Accessed 2 Jul. 2024.
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bureaucrat
noun
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