businesscrat

B3U1S1I1N1E1S1S1C3R1A1T1

noun

A corporate bureaucrat.

Scrabble 16

Meanings

businesscrat1

nounbusinesscrat (plural businesscrats)

plural businesscrats

  1. A corporate bureaucrat.

    Citizens are just as frustrated by corporate bureaucrats — or "businesscrats" — in their daily dealings with banks, department stores, and credit card companies.

    1997, James Garnett, Handbook of Administrative Communication, →ISBN, page 208
    3 more examples

    The ideal CIO must be both "a technocrat and a businesscrat at the same time," says Jerre Stead, chief executive officer at Square D Co., an electronics manufacturer in Palatine, Ill.

    1991 April 29, Joseph Maglitta, “How can you make your boss happy?”, in Computerworld

    In the 1930s, the government and the private sector had switched stereotypical roles, with the entrepreneurial impulse coming from the executive branch and resistance to change coming from Main Street “businesscrats.”

    2000, Stephen B. Adams, Mr. Kaiser Goes to Washington: The Rise of a Government Entrepreneur, →ISBN

    James Scrimgeour, whose family firm resigned in protest as brokers to MEPC, warned in a letter to The Times that the City's separate and individual activities would be submerged in vast corporations generally controlled at the top by a diminishing number of "businesscrats".

    2015, David Kynaston, The City Of London - Volume 4, →ISBN, page 429

businesscrat2

nounbusinesscrat (plural businesscrats)

plural businesscrats

  1. USA person whose career includes acting both as a business executive and a government bureaucrat in the Democratic Party in the United States.

    "Businesscrats" had staffed the war agencies and they returned to private life at the end of the conflict.

    1986, Frank Dobbin, The institutionalization of the state
    3 more examples

    Existing federal bureaucracies were not prepared to mobilize human resources and coordinate the industrial economy for war, so emergency agencies were thrown together for the occasion, mostly staffed by professional experts and "businesscrats" temporarily recruited from the corporate capitalist sector.

    1995, Kenneth Finegold, Theda Skocpol, State and Party in America's New Deal, →ISBN, page 55

    Put a business executive up for senator as a Democrat, and you've got a Businesscrat. Maybe also an endangered species.

    1996, Lee Walczak, Gail DeGeorge, “PRATFALLS DREAM CANDIDATES' RUDE AWAKENING”, in Business Week

    Second, multiple variants of a “businesscrat” — “a twentieth- century breed of businessman who spends a significant part of his life working as a government bureaucrat (Galambos, 1966, 205, fn 3)”

    2013 July, Maria N Ivanova, “The Great Recession and the state of American Capitalism”, in Science & Society, volume 77, number 3

Origin

businesscrat · noun

  1. Proto-West Germanic*bisīg
  2. Old Englishbisiġ
  3. Old Englishbisiġnes
  4. Middle Englishbisynes
  5. Englishbusiness
  6. Proto-Indo-European*péh₂wr̥
  7. Proto-Hellenic*pāwər
  8. Ancient Greekπῦρ (pûr)
  9. Ancient Greekπῠρρός (pŭrrhós)
  10. Latinburrus
  11. Latinburra
  12. Old French*bure
  13. Old Frenchburel
  14. Frenchbureau
  15. Proto-Indo-European*kret-
  16. Ancient Greekκρᾰ́τος (krắtos)
  17. Frenchbureaucratie
  18. Frenchbureaucrate
  19. Englishbureaucrat
  20. Englishbusinesscrat

Blend of business + bureaucrat.

Full word history & related roots →

businesscrat · noun

  1. Proto-West Germanic*bisīg
  2. Old Englishbisiġ
  3. Old Englishbisiġnes
  4. Middle Englishbisynes
  5. Englishbusiness
  6. EnglishDemocrat
  7. Englishbusinesscrat

Blend of business + Democrat coined by Gerald D. Nash and popularized by Louis Galambos in Competition and Cooperation: The Emergence of a National Trade Association (1966).

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

businesscrat. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/businesscrat

MLA

“businesscrat.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/businesscrat. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “businesscrat,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/businesscrat.

Source: businesscrat on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.