Meanings
- UKderogatoryuncountablegovernmentThe philosophy or sphere of civil servants, viewed as excessively liberal and officious.
This, named for the ubiquitous uniform of its proponents, is lanyardism.
2025 May 27, Madeline Grant, “The Foreign Office is now a national embarrassment”, in The Telegraph2 more examples
Layers and layers of governance and control and inefficiency and joyless lanyardism wasting time and money, commissioning reports, milking the taxpayer and the energetic dry, sitting on and squashing our still lingering culture of association and unofficial voluntarism, of clubs and committees, of swaps and schemes.
2025 June 5, Nicholas Boys Smith, “Oval's books go up in bureaucracy”, in The Criticnearly all 'clean energy' jobs are regulatory. The only expansion is in bureaucratic lanyardism
2026 August 5, Griff (@Gav_Griffiths), Twitter
Origin
Cite this entry
lanyardism. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/lanyardism
“lanyardism.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/lanyardism. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “lanyardism,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/lanyardism.
Source: lanyardism on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.