Beltway bandit
Beltway bandit noun: a consulting or research company that mostly carries out work for US government departments or agencies.
Noun
Beltway bandit (plural Beltway bandits)
- A consulting or research company that mostly carries out work for US government departments or agencies.
- He worked for a beltway bandit firm, doing engineering work. He computed trajectories on missiles... that kind of thing.2001, Richard B. Schwartz, After the Fall, page 45
- An employee of such a firm, especially a former employee of the firm's clients.
- A short-term money lender to contractors working for the US government but waiting for US congressional appropriations.
- [He] turned out to be what is called a "Beltway bandit," lending money at short-term high (but legal) rates to government contractors low on cash who are awaiting congressional appropriation funding.1999 July 1, Po Bronson, “Gen Equity”, in Wired
Forms of Beltway bandit
| plural | Beltway bandits |
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Questions about Beltway bandit
- What does Beltway bandit mean?
- Beltway bandit means a consulting or research company that mostly carries out work for US government departments or agencies.
- What part of speech is Beltway bandit?
- Beltway bandit is a noun.
- What is the plural of Beltway bandit?
- The plural of Beltway bandit is Beltway bandits.
Words near Beltway bandit in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Beltway bandit (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “Beltway bandit.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/beltway_bandit. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.