bureaucracy.
Government by bureaus or their administrators or officers.
Meaning & usage
Government by bureaus or their administrators or officers.
A system of administration based upon organisation into bureaus, division of labour, a hierarchy of authority, etc., designed to dispose of a large body of work in a routine manner.
At that time the administration replaced the system of patronage in the civil service with a bureaucracy.
The body of officers and administrators, especially of a government.
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. (apocryphal quip)
Excessive red tape and routine in any administration, body or behaviour.
The head of the civil service promised to clamp down on bureaucracy.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *péh₂wr̥ Proto-Hellenic *pāwər Ancient Greek πῦρ (pûr) Proto-Indo-European *-rós Proto-Hellenic *-rós Ancient Greek -ρός (-rós) Ancient Greek πῠρρός (pŭrrhós)bor. Latin burrus Latin burra Old French *bure Proto-Indo-European *-lós Proto-Indo-European *-elós Proto-Italic *-elos Latin -lus Latin -ellus Old French -el Old French burel French bureau Proto-Indo-European *kret-der. Ancient Greek κρᾰ́τος (krắtos) Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-i-eh₂ Proto-Hellenic *-íā Ancient Greek -ῐ́ᾱ (-ĭ́ā) Ancient Greek -κρᾰτῐ́ᾱ (-krătĭ́ā)lbor. French -cratie French bureaucratie English bureaucracy From bureau + -cracy, from French bureaucratie, coined by Jean Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay from bureau (“office”) + -cratie (“rule of”).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.