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:
AFP contacted the Beihai public security bureau and local detention facilities, but they said they would not accept interviews.
From Barron's ● Aug. 25, 2026
Forecasters at the National Weather Service expected Southern California would experience its "hottest week of summer so far", the bureau said in a recent statement.
From BBC ● Aug. 25, 2026
Raman said she talked to Bass about creating a department for homelessness in late 2023 or early 2024, but the mayor told her to move ahead with the bureau instead.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 23, 2026
Carolyn Carlson, Data-Clear’s president and founder, said she provided nationwide voting data to the bureau that year as part of a project to try and prevent an undercount of minority voters in the 2030 census.
From Salon ● Aug. 21, 2026
He ended up in the identification bureau of the Paris police only because he’d failed everywhere else.
From "The Mona Lisa Vanishes" by Nicholas Day
You can assist her in cutting up her credit cards and freezing her accounts at the major credit bureaus to make it difficult for her to take out more loans.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 27, 2026
He has held numerous roles at the network over a four decade run, anchoring the “CBS Evening News,” co-hosting the division’s weekday and Saturday morning shows, covering business and reporting from overseas bureaus.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 1, 2026
VantageScore is a joint venture of credit bureaus Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian.
From Barron's ● Apr. 29, 2026
In 2022, Fannie Mae instituted a “positive rent” initiative for landlords to report on-time rent payments—but not late or missed payments—to credit bureaus.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 26, 2026
We still had our beds and chairs and bureaus and dining-room furniture, so we could get along, but even so, the house was bare and echoey.
From "Homesick" by Jean Fritz
John Lewis said the decision to close its in-store bureaux de change was due to falling demand and that it would move gift-wrapping services from a specialised area to its tills.
From BBC ● Jul. 8, 2026
Guests were seen hugging, making calls, texting friends and loved ones, and their news bureaux.
From Barron's ● Apr. 26, 2026
She mastered the technique, and set up her own lacquerware workshop in Paris in 1910, producing screens, chairs, tables, bureaux, beds and dressing tables for some of the city’s richest clients.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 29, 2020
He fears he will be reported to one of Kenya’s three credit bureaux, jeopardizing his chances of being able to borrow more to grow his business.
From Reuters ● May 25, 2018
The most curious contrivances are often found in old German, English, and French cabinets, bureaux, secrétaires, and other varieties of this kind of furniture.
From British Manufacturing Industries Pottery, Glass and Silicates, Furniture and Woodwork. by L. Arnoux
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.
