circumlocution office

English

Alternative forms

• Circumlocution Office

Etymology

Introduced in Charles Dickens' novel Little Dorrit.

Noun

circumlocution office (plural circumlocution offices)

1. Any organization that wastes time on bureaucracy to the detriment of its actual business.
   • c. 1857, Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, published 1884, page 110:

     The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without having to be told) the most important Department under government. […] It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office.

   • 1869, George William Curtis, “Civil-Service Reform”, in Addresses and reports on the reform of the civil service of the United States, published 1894, page 22:

     Then it is said that the reform would establish a circumlocution office and restore the great official practice of how not to do it. Now, I think it would be an extremely clever circumlocution office that would practise that principle more zealously than the present system does.

   • 1988 September 28, Nat Hentoff, “The circumlocution office”, in Washington Post:

     In Westchester County, N.Y., a foster parent pleaded with the Circumlocution Office not to return a 10-month old child to her natural mother, who kept missing visits, was being beaten by her husband and had a record of mental illness. The infant, however, was returned, and was beaten to death.

   • 1997 January 22, Deaglán de Bréadún, “Plenty of double-speak when it comes to bilingualism”, in Irish Times, Dublin, page 1:

     A survey of the implementation of State policy for the promotion of bilingualism shows the spirit of the Circumlocution Office is alive and well in the Irish public sector.