bureaucracy
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
11 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "bureaucracy", 11-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Wiktionary, and usage frequency ranked against an open word-frequency list covering the top 100,000 English words. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "bureaucracy" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "bureaucracy" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
bureaucracy is aEnglishnoun. It means: Government by bureaus or their administrators or officers. Pronounced /bjʊəˈɹɒk.ɹə.si/. Often confused with bureaucrat.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | bureaucracy |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bjʊəˈɹɒk.ɹə.si/ |
| Letters | 11 |
| Frequency rank | #13,877 |
| Misspellings tracked | 16 |
| Confusable pairs | 1 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for bureaucracy is 11 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bjʊəˈɹɒk.ɹə.si/. Corpus data places it at rank #13,877 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 16 likely wrong-spelling variants for bureaucracy, with forms such as "bbureaucracy", "brueaucracy", and "bueraucracy". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 1 confusable-pair relationship, "bureaucrat", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From bureau + -cracy, from French bureaucratie, coined by Jean Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay from bureau (“office”) + -cratie (“rule of”). Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is bureaucracy, spelled B-U-R-E-A-U-C-R-A-C-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Government by bureaus or their administrators or officers.
- 2A 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.
- 3The body of officers and administrators, especially of a government.
- 4Excessive red tape and routine in any administration, body or behaviour.
Etymology
From bureau + -cracy, from French bureaucratie, coined by Jean Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay from bureau (“office”) + -cratie (“rule of”).
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: bbureaucracy,brueaucracy,bueraucracy,buraeucracy,bureacuracy,bureaucarcy,bureauccracy,bureaucraccy,bureaucracyy,bureaucrayc,bureaucrcay,bureaucrracy,bureaurcacy,bureuacracy,burreaucracy,ubreaucracy
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for bureaucracy
Misspelling Variants of "bureaucracy"
Frequency rank: #13,877 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our English index: