bureau
Americannoun
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bureaus,
plural
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bureaux
plural
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a chest of drawers, often with a mirror at the top.
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a division of a government department or an independent administrative unit.
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an office for collecting or distributing news or information, coordinating work, or performing specified services; agency.
a travel bureau; a news bureau.
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Chiefly British. a desk or writing table with drawers for papers.
noun
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a writing desk with pigeonholes, drawers, etc, against which the writing surface can be closed when not in use
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a chest of drawers
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an office or agency, esp one providing services for the public
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a government department
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a branch of a government department
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Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of bureau
1710–20; < French: desk, office, originally a kind of cloth (used to cover desks, etc.), Anglo-French, Old French burel, equivalent to bur- (probably < *būra, variant of Late Latin burra wool, fluff ; cf. bourrée) + -el noun suffix
Explanation
When you put your socks away, you'll most likely put them in a bureau, or a chest of drawers used for storing clothes. Hopefully you've washed them. A dresser or a chest of drawers can also be called a bureau, a piece of furniture with drawers for storing things. Another meaning of bureau is "an office or government agency." These two definitions seem unrelated, but the original meaning of the French word bureau, "cloth covering for a desk" helps explain. Bureau gradually evolved to mean first just "desk" (and eventually "dresser"), and around 1720 it also started being used to mean a room full of desks, or an office.
Vocabulary lists containing bureau
The Ottoman Empire: Furniture Words
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Walk Two Moons
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"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Fox’s own Washington bureau chief, Bryan Boughton, who happened to be chairing the pool this week, sent the note announcing the shutdown.
From Salon ● Sep. 26, 2026
The hackers, Shiny Hunters, say they now hold private data on all the bureau staff - around 38,000 people - including anyone who applied to join the investigative agency.
From BBC ● Sep. 23, 2026
“The national credit bureaus will activate and deactivate a credit freeze for free upon request. You must contact each bureau separately to freeze your respective credit report.”
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 22, 2026
“Effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” Bryan Boughton, the Washington bureau chief at Fox News wrote in an email to pool members.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 21, 2026
He zealously implemented the reforms requested by Stone that furthered his own desire to remake the bureau into a modern force.
From "Killers of the Flower Moon" by David Grann
Months later, he signed AB 238, a Harabedian bill that provided for 12 months of mortgage relief and banned late fees, foreclosures and negative reports to credit bureaus for homeowners who receive it.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 15, 2026
The company said it alerted the collection agency in question as well as the credit bureaus to the mistake.
From Salon ● Sep. 1, 2026
Kathleen Hughes, a former reporter in the Journal's New York and Los Angeles bureaus, writes about travel and lifestyle.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 27, 2026
Credit bureaus such as Equifax have recently said VantageScore adoption is gaining momentum, the analysts say.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 31, 2026
He went through the bureaus and the closets.
From "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy
Guests were seen hugging, making calls, texting friends and loved ones, and their news bureaux.
From Barron's ● Apr. 26, 2026
Last year Russian state media claimed that RT had seven bureaux in Africa, although this cannot be independently verified.
From BBC ● Aug. 24, 2025
A Western intelligence source said techniques were used in Sudan that are common to organised crime: Companies were headed by trustee shareholders, rents collected in cash, and transfers made through exchange bureaux.
From Reuters ● Sep. 23, 2021
In-store travel money bureaux, which are located in more than 100 stores, are unaffected.
From BBC ● Jul. 2, 2021
A series of exhibitions dealing with the work of ex-soldiers has been successfully inaugurated, and Red Triangle employment bureaux have already secured situations for more than twenty thousand discharged men.
From The Romance of the Red Triangle The story of the coming of the red triangle and the service rendered by the Y.M.C.A. to the sailors and soldiers of the British Empire by Arthur Keysall Yapp
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
