What does bureaucrat mean?
Word: Bureaucrat
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: Bureaucrat means an official who works in a government department and carries out its rules.
How do you spell bureaucrat?
Syllables: bu - reau - crat
Tricky part: Three vowels sit together in the middle, and they come from French. Students often lose one and write bureacrat, or cut the whole group and write burocrat.
Watch out for: bureacrat, burocrat
Memory tip: Keep the French word for water in the middle: eau. Those three letters do not change.
Bureaucrat in a sentence
Example 1: A senior bureaucrat visited the village to look at the new road.
Example 2: Mrs Menon worked as a bureaucrat in the education department for thirty years.
Example 3: The bureaucrat read every page of the report before she signed it.
Fun Fact
The word joins French bureau, a desk or office, to a Greek ending that means power or rule. So a bureaucrat, taken word by word, is someone who rules from a desk.
Practise the CREST Way
Mingle-Mangle
Form a meaningful word from the jumbled letters:
cruratbeau
a) democrat
b) bureaucracy
c) bureaucrat
d) aristocrat
Show answer
c) bureaucrat. Bureaucracy has a y, democrat an m and o, and aristocrat an i and s, so only one option fits.
Word Cookie
Find the extra letter in the word:
bureaucrate
a) e
b) t
c) r
d) a
Show answer
a) e. The last e must go: the word closes on a hard t, as democrat does.
Spell-o-Spell
Choose the incorrectly spelt word:
a) committee
b) democracy
c) secretary
d) burreaucrat
Show answer
d) burreaucrat. There is only one r in the first half of the word.
Word Cookie
Find the misspelt word in the sentence:
The bureaucrat from the goverment office came to see our new school library.
a) library
b) bureaucrat
c) goverment
d) office
Show answer
c) goverment. Government has an n before the ment, from govern.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. Which task would most likely land on a bureaucrat's desk?
a) baking bread for a large hotel
b) coaching a football side for a cup
c) painting a picture for an exhibition
d) checking papers for a new road plan
Show answer
d) checking papers for a new road plan
2. Who among these is a bureaucrat?
a) a goalkeeper in a football club
b) a head chef in a city hotel
c) a joint secretary in a ministry
d) a pilot with a private airline
Show answer
c) a joint secretary in a ministry
