Plural of bureau; government departments or administrative units, or pieces of furniture with drawers for storage.
From French 'bureau,' originally meaning a coarse cloth used to cover writing desks, derived from 'bure' (a dark brown cloth). The word extended from the cloth to the desk itself, then to the office where the desk sat, and finally to the organization housed in that office.
The journey of 'bureau' from a piece of cloth to entire government agencies shows how furniture can become institutions. This semantic evolution reflects how physical objects often become metonyms for the activities performed around them, eventually taking on lives of their own.
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