Word.ws English Dictionary

circumlocution office

circumlocution office noun: any organization that wastes time on bureaucracy to the detriment of its actual business.

Noun (1)

circumlocution office (plural circumlocution offices)

  1. Any organization that wastes time on bureaucracy to the detriment of its actual business.
    • The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without having to be told) the most important Department under government. […] It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office.c. 1857, Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, published 1884, page 110
    • Then it is said that the reform would establish a circumlocution office and restore the great official practice of how not to do it. Now, I think it would be an extremely clever circumlocution office that would practise that principle more zealously than the present system does.1869, George William Curtis, “Civil-Service Reform”, in Addresses and reports on the reform of the civil service of the United States, published 1894, page 22

Noun (2) capitalized: Circumlocution Office

Circumlocution Office (plural Circumlocution Offices)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of circumlocution office.

Forms of circumlocution office

pluralcircumlocution offices
alternative formCircumlocution Office
pluralCircumlocution Offices

Origin of circumlocution office

Introduced in Charles Dickens' novel Little Dorrit.

Questions about circumlocution office

What does circumlocution office mean?
Circumlocution office means any organization that wastes time on bureaucracy to the detriment of its actual business.
What part of speech is circumlocution office?
Circumlocution office is a noun.
What is the plural of circumlocution office?
The plural of circumlocution office is circumlocution offices.

Words near circumlocution office in the dictionary

  1. circumlocute
  2. circumlocuted
  3. circumlocutes
  4. circumlocuting
  5. circumlocution
  6. circumlocution office
  7. circumlocution offices
  8. circumlocutional
  9. circumlocutionally
  10. circumlocutionarily
  11. circumlocutionary

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: circumlocution office (page history and authors); Circumlocution Office (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: “circumlocution office.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/circumlocution_office. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.