Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Rigid adherence to official regulations, forms, and procedures.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Official position; office-holding; public office.
- noun An official system.
- noun That view of official position which regards office, and the mere discharge of official duty, without reference to public or other interests, as all-important; excessive attention to official routine and office detail; official strictness or stiffness; “red-tapeism.”
- noun Perfunctoriness.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The state of being official; a system of official government; also, adherence to office routine; red-tapism.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The
rigid ,perfunctory andliteral adherence toofficial duties andregulations - noun Officials collectively
Etymologies
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Examples
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The prompt Paris morning struck its cheerful notes -- in a soft breeze and a sprinkled smell, in the light flit, over the garden-floor, of bareheaded girls with the buckled strap of oblong boxes, in the type of ancient thrifty persons basking betimes where terrace-walls were warm, in the blue-frocked brass-labelled officialism of humble rakers and scrapers, in the deep references of a straight-pacing priest or the sharp ones of a white-gaitered red-legged soldier.
The Ambassadors Henry James 1879
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a sprinkled smell, in the light flit, over the garden-floor, of bareheaded girls with the buckled strap of oblong boxes, in the type of ancient thrifty persons basking betimes where terrace-walls were warm, in the blue-frocked brass-labelled officialism of humble rakers and scrapers, in the deep references of a straight-pacing priest or the sharp ones of a white-gaitered red-legged soldier.
The Ambassadors 2003
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“There is no need to mention the excessive bureaucracy and officialism which is the crying evil of this country.
Musicians of To-Day Rolland, Romain, 1866-1944 1915
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"There is no need to mention the excessive bureaucracy and officialism which is the crying evil of this country.
Musicians of To-Day Romain Rolland 1905
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What will happen when the various divisions of this vast army of officials, united by interests common to officialism—the interests of the regulators versus those of the regulated—have at their command whatever force is needful to suppress insubordination and act as "saviours of society?"
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Unless the whole domestic group hold together with a sort of loyalty or local patriotism, unless the inheritance of property is logical and legitimate, unless the family quarrels are kept out of the courts of officialism, the tradition of family ownership cannot be handed on unimpaired.
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What they lack in religious officialism they make up for with the reception.
Kyle’s Journey in Armenia » Blog Archive » I Should Have Known When the Chicken Arrived… 2008
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What they lack in religious officialism they make up for with the reception.
Kyle’s Journey in Armenia » Blog Archive » I Should Have Known When the Chicken Arrived… 2008
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Chinamen are living in huts on some festering slime between the river and the jungle; and once a police station on stilts, where six policemen stood in a row and saluted as we passed, and at seven we reached Teluk Kartang, with a pier, a long shed, two or three huts, and some officialism, white and partly white, all in a
The Golden Chersonese and the way thither Isabella Lucy 2004
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In a country smarting from officialism he felt that he had a strong case.
To Let 2004
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