- bureaucracy (n.) - 1818, from French bureaucratie, coined by
French economist Jean Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay
(1712-1759) on model of democratie, aristocratie, from bureau
"office," literally "desk" (see bureau) + Greek suffix -kratia
denoting "power of" (see -cracy). That vast net-work of
administrative tyranny ... that system of bureaucracy, which
leaves no free agent in all France, except for the man at Paris
who pulls the wires. [J.S. Mill, "Westminster Review" XXVIII,
1837] bureaucrat, &c. The formation is so barbarous that all
attempt at self-respect in pronunciation may perhaps as well be
abandoned. [Fowler]