informant
Americannoun
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a person who informs or gives information; informer.
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a person who supplies social or cultural data in answer to the questions of an investigator.
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Linguistics. a native speaker of a language who supplies utterances and forms for one analyzing or learning the language.
noun
Etymology
Origin of informant
1655–65; < Latin infōrmant- (stem of infōrmāns ) present participle of infōrmāre. See inform 1, -ant
Explanation
An informant is someone who secretly provides information to police, the FBI, or another law enforcement agency. If you watch a lot of crime shows on TV, you're probably familiar with informants. In the world of law enforcement, informants are officially called CIs, for "confidential informant" or "criminal informant." The information informants provide can be useful in catching criminals, and the informant usually gets something in return — money or a reduced prison sentence, for example. Sometimes informant simply means "person who gives information."
Vocabulary lists containing informant
Because They Marched
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"The Macbeth Murder Mystery" by James Thurber
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Unit 8: Vocabulary from Readings
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Aleksandar Matanovic, a Serbian grandmaster who co-founded Chess Informant, a publishing company that revolutionized how players learned and studied the game, died on Aug. 9 in Belgrade.
From New York Times • Aug. 17, 2023
To this day, opening up an Informant from the mid-1970s can revive an entire era and lead to several hours of blissful time-wasting.
From Washington Times • Aug. 15, 2023
Several Russian war accounts on Telegram also reported his death, including blogger WarGonzo and Military Informant, a channel with more than half a million followers.
From BBC • Jul. 12, 2023
Entry 819 in the Register of Deaths in Aberdeenshire lists Princess Anne, the Princess Royal as the Informant.
From Washington Post • Sep. 29, 2022
In case documents, she would be called “Confidential Informant T4.”
From "The Woman All Spies Fear" by Amy Butler Greenfield
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
