[U] (disapproving) official rules that seem more complicated than necessary and prevent things from being done quickly:
bureaucratic red tape * You have to go through endless red tape to get a residence permit.
ORIGIN From the custom of tying up official documents with red or pink tape.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for red tape is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is red tape a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, red tape is tagged as noun.
Does red tape appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — red tape appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
