red tape

1. 1.

   needlessly time-consuming procedure

   Synonymsbureaucratic procedure

   Broaderprocedure

Questions about red tape

What does red tape mean?

red tape means "needlessly time-consuming procedure".

What is another word for red tape?

Close synonyms include bureaucratic procedure. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is red tape a common word?

red tape is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.