bureaun.

Etymology: < French bureau baize which covers a table used for accounting (1316 in Old French as burel ), table used for accounting (1361 in Middle French), table at which audiences are granted (1477), room in which audiences are granted (containing a table for this purpose) (a1483), accounting office (1495), writing desk (second half of the 16th cent.), office used for the transaction of government or public business (1557; 1680 in extended use, denoting any kind of office), specific semantic developments of Old French buriau , Old French, Middle French burel , Middle French bureau coarse woollen stuff, baize (used for covering writing desks) (see burel n.¹). Compare Spanish bureo (1533), Italian bureau (1747 as †burrò , originally in sense ‘writing desk’), Dutch bureau (1759; already 1475 in Middle Dutch as bureel as a loan < Middle French burel burel n.¹), German Bureau (1695 denoting a writing desk covered with coarse cloth, late 18th cent. denoting an office; now usually Büro), Swedish byrå (1728 as †bureau), all < French.In plural form bureaux after the French plural form. The stress appears to have originally been on the final syllable. N.E.D. (1888) notes this as the usual position of stress in British usage, and British 19th-cent. and early 20th-cent. pronouncing dictionaries record final-syllable stress as the only or chief variant ( D. Jones Eng. Pronouncing Dict. gives first-syllable stress as the preferred pronunciation from ed. 11 (1956) onwards). By contrast, 19th-cent. and 20th-cent. U.S. dictionaries, beginning with Webster (1828), record only the form with first-syllable stress. N.E.D. (1888) also notes that in senses 1a and 2a the word was ‘formerly treated as French and pronounced (bürō) /byroː/’.