Idiom
red tape
Meaning
Time-consuming regulations or bureaucratic procedures.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“There's too much red tape to get the permit.”
“We need to cut through the red tape to finish this project.”
“Starting a business here is slow because of all the red tape you have to go through.”
“The hospital staff spent more time dealing with red tape than actually caring for the patients in the ward.”
“I tried to renew my passport online, but the endless red tape made the process feel impossible.”
“The aid shipment sat in the port for weeks, tangled in red tape that no one seemed able to cut.”
Examples
simple
“There's too much red tape to get the permit.”
“We need to cut through the red tape to finish this project.”
contextual
“Starting a business here is slow because of all the red tape you have to go through.”
“The hospital staff spent more time dealing with red tape than actually caring for the patients in the ward.”
“I tried to renew my passport online, but the endless red tape made the process feel impossible.”
complex
“The aid shipment sat in the port for weeks, tangled in red tape that no one seemed able to cut.”
Origin
The term originates from the 17th-century administrative habit of binding official government documents with red-coloured tape. While the practice of securing legal papers in this manner was well-established in the English bureaucracy, the first recorded use of the phrase appeared c. 1658 in the publication Public Intelligencer. The physical ribbon served to keep related parchments together, necessitating a literal cutting of the tape before any official business could proceed.
Key words
Related idioms
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