noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   The system of committees, composed of representatives of the member states, used to oversee European Commission implementing acts made under European Union legislation. European-Union, countable, uncountable
2. 2
   The study of how committees could work, expand, and ramify. countable, humorous, uncountable

Etymology

From committee + -ology, introduced by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in humorous essays published in The Economist.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.