insider
Americannoun
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insiders
plural
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a person who is a member of a group, organization, society, etc.
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a person belonging to a limited circle of persons who understand the actual facts in a situation or share private knowledge.
Insiders knew that the president would veto the bill.
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a person who has some special advantage or influence.
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a person in possession of corporate information not generally available to the public, as a director, an accountant, or other officer or employee of a corporation.
noun
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a member of a specified group
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a person with access to exclusive information
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of insider
Explanation
An insider is someone, usually one of a small group, who has access to secret or private information. A political insider knows what really goes on behind the scenes in a campaign or a senator's office. In a large company, insiders are privy to financial information or details about the way things work — information that isn't available to an ordinary employee or the general public. In the financial world, an insider knows things about the businesses whose stock is being traded, and "insider trading" is when they illicitly use this information for personal gain.
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.
See Examples For:
Another benefit is that it shields their executives from testifying in court or insider documents spilling into the public domain.
From Barron's ● Nov. 2, 2026
But in 2004 she was sentenced to five months in prison after she was found guilty on a number of charges related to an insider trading scandal.
From BBC ● Nov. 2, 2026
According to a royal insider, Prince William has "no intention" of engaging with Prince Harry, the paper reports, after the younger brother called for a reconciliation.
From BBC ● Oct. 22, 2026
Improving technical signals and insider buying suggest the sector’s rally could continue.
From Barron's ● Oct. 21, 2026
Many times the primary author does not have enough insider knowledge of the language, and has to rely on someone with that knowledge to help with song lyrics and other cultural attributes.
From "Music and the Child" by Natalie Sarrazin
Some firm insiders say there was a power struggle between influential partners who wanted to grow to compete with mega-firm rivals and others who wanted to remain smaller.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 28, 2026
However, insiders says the manufacturers are all aligned on wanting to design and build their own power-units and for engines to remain a performance differentiator.
From BBC ● Oct. 27, 2026
Even industry insiders, such as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, have warned of mass job losses.
From Barron's ● Oct. 26, 2026
The Halloween season is actually referred to as “the thirteenth month” by insiders.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 26, 2026
“Don’t be so dramatic. I think they want experienced insiders to do stories that are about more than just the number of Biafran dead.”
From "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
