Red Tape

This one is pleasingly literal. From at least the 16th century, English government officials and lawyers really did bind their official documents and legal papers with strips of red cloth tape, partly practical (keeping bundles of paper together) and partly a visual marker that a document had been through the proper process. A similar story is told about Charles V of Spain using red tape to flag urgent paperwork a little earlier. Either way, the sheer amount of paper-tying involved in getting anything done through official channels became a byword for needless delay, with the figurative sense of "red tape" meaning fussy bureaucracy recorded in print by 1796.