bureaucratese
1
9.9
- noun
- /ˌbjʊəroʊkrəˈtiːz/
- Literature
:
burocratés
- At first, she thought he was speaking one of those low-efficiency dialects civilians often used: bureaucratese or social science babble... as impoverished of content as they were rich in syllables.
Examples
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The job descriptions were filled with confusing bureaucratese that only specialists could understand.
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A chill ran through Bryson upon hearing the bureaucratese that told him Waller had already distanced himself from the consequences of the decision to let him go.
Fiction book (2001) -
If the airlines don't have enough sense to "automatically de-select" these individuals (gotta love the bureaucratese), then the TSA should.
Blog text (9) -
I replied that such terminology didn't likely exist in Alinsky's day, and it didn't make sense to ask him to use politically correct bureaucratese from the 1990s. "If we limit ourselves to books written in the 1990s, we will be stuck with Gwyneth Paltrow," I said sarcastically.
Academic text (2003) -
The topography gets hillier, the farmland is poorer, and the infrastructure—bureaucratese for roads and bridges—is disintegrating.
Fiction book (1992) -
When O'Leary and her team approached various federal agencies responsible, such as NASA, to discuss legal issues related to space and national historic place designations, they were rebuffed by terse bureaucratese: "Placing Tranquility Base under protection might imply that the U.S. intended to exert sovereignty over the Moon."
Academic text (2004) -
The report was written in such bureaucratese that most people found it difficult to follow.
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After reading the long document, I realized it was filled with bureaucratese that obscured the real issue.
Synonyms
43
7.2
Words used by a group or job that others cannot understand
9
9.9
Confusing speech or writing full of technical words that most people cannot understand
1
9.8
Language that is hard to understand because it uses many difficult words or nonsense
Formal, hard to understand language that government officials use
Official language in European Union documents that is long and hard to understand
Antonyms
How Formal
Surface Forms
Morphology
bureaucratese = bureaucrat (transparent) = bureaucrat + ese
A regular denominal formation: '-ese' added to 'bureaucrat' yields 'the language or style of bureaucrats', following the productive pattern seen in words like 'legalese' and 'journalese'.
Etymology
Bureaucratese comes from bureaucrat, meaning 'an official who works in an office', and the ending -ese, which means 'language', as in Chinese or legalese. So bureaucratese is the formal, often complicated 'language' that officials use, full of long words and jargon.