the.com/bureau
a desk so French it became the government, then the building, then the dread.
means A bureau is a writing desk, an office or department (especially a governmental one), or a chest of drawers, depending on which side of the Atlantic you're standing on.
from From French bureau, originally the coarse woolen cloth (Old French burel) used to cover writing desks — a cousin, possibly, of Late Latin burra, 'shaggy wool.' The cloth named the desk; the desk named the office where such desks sat; the office named the whole administrative apparatus, giving us 'bureaucracy.' A scrap of fabric quietly conquered the machinery of state.
- word origin
- From burel, the wool cloth covering medieval writing desks
- meaning creep
- Furniture became office, then department, then entire agencies
- bureaucracy
- Literally rule by desk, coined as an insult
- the FBI
- Three of its letters are just this one word
- british dressers
- There a bureau is a fancy fold-down writing desk
bureau of labor statistics — us agency that publishes monthly employment data and inflation reports since 1884
xinhua news bureau — chinese state news agency founded 1937, world's largest news organization by some metrics