bureaucrat
noun
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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
Phillip Molnar, San Diego Union-Tribune, 23 May 2024
Until recently, Dorval R. Carter Jr. was another relatively unknown bureaucrat, a man who had quietly worked under three mayors as the president of the Chicago Transit Authority.
—Julie Bosman, New York Times, 22 May 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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“Bureaucrat.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bureaucrat. Accessed 29 May. 2024.
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bureaucrat
noun
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