Plural of “bureau”

The plural of bureau is bureaus (some dictionaries also accept bureaux).

Why

"Bureau" entered English from French in the 18th century, originally meaning a writing desk covered in coarse cloth ("bure" in Old French), and later extending to mean the office or department that worked at such a desk — hence "Federal Bureau of Investigation." French plurals ending in -eau typically add an -x rather than -s ("bureau/bureaux," "chateau/chateaux"), and English initially imported that French plural spelling wholesale along with the word itself.

Over the two-plus centuries since, "bureaus" has become the dominant plural in American English especially, while "bureaux" persists more in British and more formal or old-fashioned writing — a split that reflects the general pattern of French loanwords gradually regularizing toward ordinary English -s plurals the longer and more commonly they're used.

Usage note

"Bureaus" is the safer default for American audiences and for everyday writing about government agencies or furniture; "bureaux" survives mainly in British usage and in writing that wants a slightly more formal or antique flavor, such as describing 18th-century furniture specifically.

The furniture and government-office senses of "bureau" pluralize identically — there's no separate rule for the piece of furniture versus the administrative department, even though the two meanings feel quite distant from each other today. In American government specifically, "bureau" survives in the names of major federal agencies (the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics), and when writers discuss several such agencies collectively, "bureaus" is the form used almost without exception in American news writing and official documents, reinforcing how thoroughly the word has anglicized within institutional American English specifically.

Common real mistakes

Writers sometimes hypercorrect and add an -x to words that never had it, mistakenly writing "bureax" or misspelling "bureaux" as "burreax" — the French plural spelling is specifically -eaux, matching the singular's -eau ending plus x.

The wider pattern

"Bureau" belongs to a small family of French -eau loanwords — including "chateau," "plateau," "tableau," and "beau" — that all originally took the French -x plural in English and have each regularized toward -s at somewhat different rates, with "bureau" among the furthest along that path in everyday American usage. The furniture sense of "bureau" has become somewhat old-fashioned in everyday American speech, with many younger speakers more likely to say "dresser," reserving "bureau" mostly for antique furniture descriptions or for the unrelated governmental sense — a genuine generational shift in which meaning of the word feels more current.

Examples

• Both federal bureaus investigated different aspects of the same case.
• She kept her jewelry in an antique bureau passed down from her grandmother.
• Several bureaux across Europe still use the French spelling in their official names.
• The two bureaus rarely shared information before the new policy took effect.
• Weather bureaus in the region coordinated forecasts during the storm.
• The auction included three matching bureaus from the same estate.
• Government bureaus were consolidated to cut administrative costs.
• Translation bureaus in the city handle documents in over twenty languages.
• The museum displayed bureaux crafted by the same 18th-century workshop.
• News bureaus around the world picked up the story within hours.
• Three separate bureaus investigated different aspects of the fraud case.
• The antique dealer specialized in bureaus from a single French workshop.
• Regional weather bureaus coordinated their forecasts ahead of the storm.
• Both credit bureaus reported slightly different scores for the same applicant.
• The antique bureaus fetched high prices at the estate sale.
• Both government bureaus published separate reports on the same issue.
• She refinished two matching bureaus inherited from her grandparents.
• Regional bureaus coordinated the emergency response across state lines.
• The two rival bureaus eventually merged into a single larger agency.
• She donated her grandmother's bureaus to a local history museum.