pl. -x, -s. [a. F. bureau writing-desk, office, from bureau coarse woollen stuff, baize (for covering writing-desks); see BUREL. (In sense 2 often treated as Fr.) In Great Britain the stress is usually on the final syllable, but Webster gives it only on the first.]
1. ‘A chest of drawers with a writing-board’ (J.): a writing-desk with drawers for papers, etc. Bureau-bed = BOX-BED.
1742. Richardson, Pamela, IV. 79. My Diamond Buckle … Miss Nancy will find in the inner Till of my Bureau.
1764. Foote, Patron, II. i. I suppose … my memory or mind to be a chest of drawers, a kind of bureau.
1818. Cruise, Digest, vi. 66. After the testator’s death both sheets of paper were found in his bureau.
1875. Miss Braddon, Str. World, II. i. 3. A heavy old bureau, brass handled and brass clamped.
2. An office, esp. for the transaction of public business; a department of public administration.
In this sense the word is chiefly employed when foreign countries are referred to. In the U.S. it occurs in the official titles of certain government offices, whence also in very recent official use in England, as in ‘Emigration Bureau,’ ‘Labour Bureau.’
1720. Lond. Gaz., 5835/3. The Bank having opened a Bureau for buying and selling Actions.
1789–96. Morse, Amer. Geog., II. 463. The department of the treasury … is divided into twelve bureaux.
1813. Sir R. Wilson, Priv. Diary, II. 433. The counsels which have … emanated from the Austrian bureaux.
1856. Emerson, Eng. Traits, Wks. 1874, II. 41. They have made London a shop, a law-court, a record office, and scientific bureau.
1880. ‘E. Kirke,’ Garfield, 43. What can a bureau do, with the whole weight of congressional influence pressing for the appointment of men because they are our friends.
Hence Bureauism, officialism, ‘red-tape-ism.’
1871. Daily News, 9 Feb., 5/5. The Ministry … with all its routine of tape, wax, seals, and bureauism.
