Meaning of circumlocution office | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Alternative letter-case form of circumlocution office.
   alt-of
2. Any organization that wastes time on bureaucracy to the detriment of its actual business.

Examples

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

CEFR level