Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use bureaucracy in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun

Bureaucracy means government by bureaus or their administrators or officers. Example: “At that time the administration replaced the system of patronage in the civil service with a bureaucracy.”

Examples of bureaucracy by meaning

nounGovernment 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.2021 December 29, Philip Haigh, “Rail's role in unifying Great Britain and Northern Ireland”, in RAIL, number 947, page 25

nounA system of administration based upon organisation into bureaus, division of labour, a hierarchy of authority, etc....

  • At that time the administration replaced the system of patronage in the civil service with a bureaucracy.
  • Each of the most provocative selections is facing criticism that they lack the expertise and experience to run the vast, specialized bureaucracies that would be under their control.2024 November 18, Stephen Collinson, “Trump doubles down on provocative Cabinet picks as their fates hang in the balance”, in CNN, archived...

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

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

More sentences with bureaucracy

  • It is very difficult to get bureaucracies to abandon their institutionalized practices.From the entry institutionalized
  • Can we cut through the bureaucracy and make a decision on the spot?From the entry cut through
  • The paperwork got lost in a quagmire of bureaucracy.From the entry quagmire
  • Bureaucracy and over-regulation have stultified the economy.From the entry stultify
  • The bureaucracy was subject to government oversight.From the entry oversight
  • Working in any bureaucracy means being bedeviled by inanities daily.From the entry inanity
  • The bureaucracy is bigger, the forms have multiplied, the benefits have become more complicated.2011, Peter S. Gaytan, For Service to Your Country: The Essential Guide to Getting the Veterans' Benefits You've Earned, →ISBN, page xv. From the entry not your father's
  • The general suspicion of businesspeople within the population also extends to the bureaucracy and reinforces obstructivism.2003, Katherine Blue Carroll, Business as Usual?: Economic Reform in Jordan, page 212. From the entry obstructivism
  • He has authored many books in the fields of public bureaucracy, democracy, political development, elections, and cybergovernment.2000, Wonmo Dong, The two Koreas and the United States. From the entry cybergovernment
  • However, the Chinese found that there were real difficulties in Tibetanising the bureaucracy.1999, Tsering Shakya, The Dragon in the Land of Snows, London: Pimlico, →ISBN, page 390. From the entry Tibetanise
  • The performance of it, however, did not improve, being octopussed by centuries-old not-to-move bureaucracy.1993, Mohammad Abdul Mannan, Growth and development of small enterprise, page 92. From the entry octopus
  • This is what happens when you give constitutional authority to a bureaucracy.1993, Stephen Peace, quotee, Committee Overview: Industry and Consumer Perspective, California State Assembly Committee on Utilities and…. From the entry amok
  • Bureaucracy depends on going through channels and keeping information in bounds.1992 December, David Ronfeldt, “Cyberocracy is coming”, in The Information Society, volume 8, number 4, →DOI, →ISSN, page 255. From the entry cyberocracy
  • They tend to have constantly changing units (as opposed to the relatively stable functional departments of bureaucracies).1987, H. W. Hendrick, “Human Factors in Organizational Design and Management”, in Peter A. Hancock, editor, Human Factors Psychology…. From the entry adhocracy
  • Perhaps that’s why bureaucratic prose becomes so turgid, whatever the bureaucracy.1976, William Zinsser, On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition, Kindle edition, Harper Perennial, published 2012, →ISBN, page 172. From the entry turgid
  • The superfirms tend to become elaborate bureaucracies, with special patterns of recruitment, in-service training, and so on.1975, Roger Hilsman, The crouching future: international politics and U.S. foreign policy. From the entry superfirm
  • A most illuminating, popular description of bureaucracy is found in John D.1971, O. Glenn Stahl, “The Growing Business of Government”, in Public Personnel Administration, 6th edition, Nwe York, N.Y.: Harper & Row…. From the entry berater
  • Marked with the administrative details of government, the tablets have illuminated the complicated bureaucracy of an ancient Mesopotamian civilization.2025 March 19, Sonja Anderson, “4,000-Year-Old Clay Tablets Show Ancient Sumerians’ Obsession With Government Bureaucracy”, in…. From the entry clay tablet
  • In fact, if anything, it is an underweening bureaucracy.2010, Rena Steinzor, Sidney Shapiro, The People's Agents and the Battle to Protect the American Public, →ISBN. From the entry underweening
  • Diocesan bureaucracies were both symptom and cause of this.2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin, published 2010, page 378. From the entry diocesan
  • The Phoenix warning is a profound embarrassment to the intelligence bureaucracy, and Williams is probably lucky to have his job.2002 May 23, Mary McGrory, “The Man Behind The Memo”, in The Washington Post, Washington, D.C.: The Washington Post Company, →ISSN, →OCLC…. From the entry dot-connector
  • Maybe she, being smart as kithfolk usually were, could get a well-paid position in a guild or in the vicarial bureaucracy.1999, Poul Anderson, Starfarers, →ISBN, page 81. From the entry kithfolk
  • Cyberocracy must surpass bureaucracy and its 20th-century iteration, technocracy if new techniques of acquiring and using information are to take hold.1992 December, David Ronfeldt, “Cyberocracy is coming”, in The Information Society, volume 8, number 4, →DOI, →ISSN, page 255. From the entry cyberocracy
  • The cruise missile issue finally has shoved Nato out of the Brussels warrooms and defense ministries' bureaucracies into the public arena.1981, Wendy Chapkis, Loaded Questions: Women in the Military, page 60. From the entry warroom
  • It would be absurd to say that Marxism was predestined to become the ideology of the self-glorifying Russian bureaucracy.1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume III: The Breakdown, Oxford…. From the entry accidental
  • Government bureaucracies have their own jargon, and so do journalists.1978 November 18, Richard Roberts, “The Queen's English”, in Edmonton Journal, via Newspapers.com, retrieved 18 Aug 2026, page D2. From the entry bafflegabble
  • Bureaucracy begins as well-meaning grandmotherism and ends as tyranny.1932, Arthur Bryant, The Spirit of Conservatism, page 32. From the entry grandmotherism
  • Coristine is one of a team of teenage and twentysomething software engineers, apparently conscripted by Musk in his largely unchecked war against bureaucracy.2025 February 7, Josie Ensor, “Meet Elon Musk’s ‘baby-faced assassins’ leading Doge takeover”, in The Times. From the entry unchecked
  • "It is not possible to send a train load of humanitarian aid without a train load of bureaucracy to go with it.2022 April 20, Tony Streeter, Paul Clifton, “Relief train from the UK takes aid to Ukraine”, in RAIL, number 955, page 29. From the entry trainload
  • Today’s statement recognizes that the US-Taiwan relationship need not, and should not, be shackled by self-imposed restrictions of our permanent bureaucracy,” Pompeo wrote.2021 January 9, Kylie Atwood, quoting Mike Pompeo, “US lifts self-imposed restrictions with Taiwan”, in CNN, archived from the original on…. From the entry recognize
  • Khrushchev made a grave miscalculation when he failed to appreciate the growing opposition to his power and overestimated the support of his bureaucracy.2017, Vladimir Shlapentokh, A Normal Totalitarian Society, page 80. From the entry grave
  • However, Anchorageites could also see the problems that came with bureaucracy and did not want government ownership of all forms of public transportation and communication.2010, Preston Jones, City for Empire: An Anchorage History, 1914-1941, →ISBN, page 42. From the entry Anchorageite
  • Of course, it's "soporifically boring" - quite deliberately so, "the Brussels bureaucracy aims to keep the public's nose out of 'its' business"2007 June 23, “Deciding Europe's fate”, in The Week, volumes 619, 5. From the entry soporifically
  • Washington bureaucracy works in strange ways.2007, Peter D. Zimmerman, “The Strange Tale of the Hafnium Bomb: A Personal Narrative”, in American Physical Society News. From the entry isomer bomb
  • Standards, rules, protocol— that was the stuff of statedom and bureaucracy; and tribunal members, like their counterparts around the globe, were immersed in them.2004, Irene Silverblatt, Modern Inquisitions: Peru and the Colonial Origins of the Civilized World. From the entry statedom
  • The system should avoid certain inherent distortions to the generated processes of centralized structure, such as ritualism, intempestivity, bureaucracy, imposition of norms, etc.2002, Odorico Monteiro de Andrade, Management of the Brazilian Health System, CONASEMS, →ISBN, page 150. From the entry intempestivity

Meaning of bureaucracy

  1. noun Government by bureaus or their administrators or officers.
  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.
  3. noun The body of officers and administrators, especially of a government.

Full definition of bureaucracy

Questions about bureaucracy in a sentence

How do you use bureaucracy in a sentence?
Bureaucracy is used as a noun. For example: “At that time the administration replaced the system of patronage in the civil service with a bureaucracy.”
What is a short sentence with bureaucracy?
“Washington bureaucracy works in strange ways.”
What does bureaucracy mean?
Bureaucracy means government by bureaus or their administrators or officers.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bureaucracy (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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