informant

[in-fawr-muhnt]

noun

1. a person who informs inform or gives information; informer.

   Synonyms: tipster, adviser, source

2. a person who supplies social or cultural data in answer to the questions of an investigator.

3. Linguistics.,  a native speaker of a language who supplies utterances and forms for one analyzing or learning the language.

informant

/ ɪnˈfɔːmənt /

noun

1. a person who gives information about a thing, a subject being studied, etc

Word History and Origins

Origin of informant¹

1655–65; < Latin infōrmant- (stem of infōrmāns ) present participle of infōrmāre. See inform ¹, -ant

Example Sentences

In an intercepted call, Castro and Cano discussed “pinning” the drugs and guns on the suspected informant, but agreed it would only work if the alleged snitch was “already dead.”

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Detectives put him in a cell with an undercover informant, who posed as a fellow 18th Street member.

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She would later cast herself as a sought-after FBI informant who had come to live in fear of some unspecified threat.

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The case centres on a neo-Nazi state informant known as Agent X who used his MI5 role to coerce his girlfriend, whom he attacked with a machete.

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His department turned Marx’s informant into a ghost, shuttling him between facilities under a series of fake names, as Marx tried doggedly to find him.

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