correspondent

American  

[kawr-uh-spon-duhnt, kor-] / ˌkɔr əˈspɒn dənt, ˌkɒr- /

noun

• correspondents
  plural

1. a person who communicates by letters.

2. a person employed by a news agency, periodical, television network, etc., to gather, report, or contribute news, articles, and the like regularly from a distant place.

3. a person who contributes a letter or letters to a newspaper, magazine, etc.

4. a person or firm that has regular business relations with another, especially at a distance.

5. a thing that corresponds to something else.

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adjective

1. consistent, similar, or analogous; corresponding.

correspondent British  

/ ˌkɒrɪˈspɒndənt /

noun

1. a person who communicates by letter or by letters

2. a person employed by a newspaper, etc, to report on a special subject or to send reports from a foreign country

3. a person or firm that has regular business relations with another, esp one in a different part of the country or abroad

4. something that corresponds to another

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adjective

1. similar or analogous

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• noncorrespondent
  adjective
• precorrespondent
  adjective
• correspondently
  adverb

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• correspondents
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of correspondent

1375–1425; late Middle English < Medieval Latin corrēspondent- (stem of corrēspondēns ), present participle of corrēspondēre to correspond; see -ent

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Explanation

A correspondent is a reporter who writes or records stories on one topic or from one region. If you're hired as a radio station's financial correspondent, you'll need to do a lot of research on the economy. A journalist might work as a TV station's Middle East correspondent or a newspaper's education correspondent. You can also call yourself a correspondent if you're a regular letter or email writer, corresponding, or communicating, with someone. As an adjective, though, correspondent means "matching or agreeing." The word is rooted in the Medieval Latin correspondere, "to answer together."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

correspondent correspondents

Chief political correspondent Josh Dawsey went back to his alma mater, the University of South Carolina, where the campus is booming but many students he spoke with are uneasy about their own economic futures.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 16, 2026

Mikael Corre, Vatican correspondent for France's La Croix newspaper, told AFP the way Leo is perceived has shifted.

From Barron's ● Oct. 15, 2026

She previously worked as a Washington correspondent for the Kansas City Star and an investigative reporter for the Star and McClatchy newspapers.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2026

BBC World News correspondent Joe Inwood explains what we know about the meeting.

From BBC ● Oct. 14, 2026

The BBC correspondent asked for more news from Swat for the next diary post.

From "Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Changed the World" by Malala Yousafzai

The Moscow Times, a small, independent English-language paper founded in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, had become a training ground for a generation of foreign correspondents.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 25, 2026

The BBC's correspondents who covered the address have picked five key moments that stood out.

From BBC ● Sep. 22, 2026

Without access to the grounds, affected journalists also lose their regular workspace and access to areas such as Reporters’ Lane, where television correspondents frequently deliver live reports from the White House complex.

From Salon ● Sep. 19, 2026

But personalities matter to TV viewers, and the new “60 Minutes” is without four of its longtime correspondents — Anderson Cooper, Scott Pelley, Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 15, 2026

With his other correspondents, though not with Jefferson, he was much more forthright.

From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis

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Related Words

• contributor
• journalist
• reporter
• writer

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