bureau

Pronunciation

• IPA: UK /ˈbjʊə.rəʊ/, /ˈbjɔː.rəʊ/, US /ˈbjʊr.oʊ/^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French bureau (“office, desk; originally a cloth covering for a desk”),^[2][3][4] from Old French burel (“coarse woollen cloth”), a diminutive of bure “dark brown cloth”,^[2][3][5] of uncertain origin: perhaps from Latin burrus “red”, from Greek pyrrhós, or from Late Latin burra “coarse wool”.^[2][3][6][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

A writing desk with drawers: 1699 in Barnhart, the 1690s in Etymonline, 1742 in the OED.^[3][2][7]

Semantic evolution

Because such desks were the common furniture of offices, by 1720 the word meant an office for public business, first in the London Gazette.^[2][3][7][8] A chest of drawers for clothes is from 1770, said to be American though early in British use.^[2] In North America the piece of furniture is a chest of drawers rather than a desk.^[8] Bureaucracy is from 1818, from French bureaucratie, a coinage of the economist Vincent de Gournay.^[3]

Timeline

• 1699 – a writing desk.^[3]
• 1720 – an office.^[3][7]
• 1770 – a chest of drawers.^[2]
• 1818 – bureaucracy.^[3]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. An office or agency providing a service: a travel bureau.
2. A government department or one of its divisions.
3. (British) A writing desk with drawers.
4. (US) A chest of drawers.

Word family

• bureaucrat
• subbureau
• bureau de change
• credit bureau

Related words

• bureaucracy
• bureaucratic
• baize

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b Pearsall, Judy, ed. (1998), The New Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press