Meanings
businesscrat1
plural businesscrats
- 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 2083 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 ComputerworldIn 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, →ISBNJames 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
plural businesscrats
- 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 state3 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 55Put 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 WeekSecond, 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
- Proto-West Germanic*bisīg
- Old Englishbisiġ
- Old Englishbisiġnes
- Middle Englishbisynes
- Englishbusiness
- Proto-Indo-European*péh₂wr̥
- Proto-Hellenic*pāwər
- Ancient Greekπῦρ (pûr)
- Ancient Greekπῠρρός (pŭrrhós)
- Latinburrus
- Latinburra
- Old French*bure
- Old Frenchburel
- Frenchbureau
- Proto-Indo-European*kret-
- Ancient Greekκρᾰ́τος (krắtos)
- Frenchbureaucratie
- Frenchbureaucrate
- Englishbureaucrat
- Englishbusinesscrat
Blend of business + bureaucrat.
Full word history & related roots →businesscrat · noun
- Proto-West Germanic*bisīg
- Old Englishbisiġ
- Old Englishbisiġnes
- Middle Englishbisynes
- Englishbusiness
- EnglishDemocrat
- 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
businesscrat. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/businesscrat
“businesscrat.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/businesscrat. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “businesscrat,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/businesscrat.
Source: businesscrat on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.