bureaucracy

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   Government by bureaus or their administrators or officers.

   However, when Britain left the European Union, ferries started to ply a direct sea link from Ireland, to save hauliers from custom's bureaucracy of driving via Britain.

2. 2
   noun

   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.

3. 3
   noun

   The body of officers and administrators, especially of a government.

   The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. (apocryphal quip)

4. 4
   noun

   Excessive red tape and routine in any administration, body or behaviour.

   The head of the civil service promised to clamp down on bureaucracy.

5. 5
   noun

   any organization in which action is obstructed by insistence on unnecessary procedures and red tape

6. 6
   noun

   a government that is administered primarily by bureaus that are staffed with nonelective officials

7. 7
   noun

   nonelective government officials

Etymology

From bureau + -cracy, from French bureaucratie, coined by Jean Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay from bureau (“office”) + -cratie (“rule of”).