narrator

American  

[nar-ay-ter, na-ray-, nar-uh-] / ˈnær eɪ tər, næˈreɪ-, ˈnær ə- /

Or narrater

noun

• narrators
  plural

1. 

   a person who gives an account or tells the story of events, experiences, etc.

2. a person who adds spoken commentary to a film, television program, slide show, etc.

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narrator British  

/ nəˈreɪtə /

noun

1. a person who tells a story or gives an account of something

2. a person who speaks in accompaniment of a film, television programme, etc

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narrator Cultural  

1. A person who tells a story; in literature, the voice that an author takes on to tell a story. This voice can have a personality quite different from the author's. For example, in his story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe makes his narrator a raving lunatic.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• narrators
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of narrator

First recorded in 1610–20; from Latin narrātor “narrator, historian” see narrate ( def. ), -or ² ( def. )

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Explanation

A narrator is the storyteller in a book or movie. One of the most famous literary narrators is Herman Melville's Ishmael, who tells the story of Moby Dick. The narrator is the person who tells the story — in other words, she narrates it. In a fictional work, the narrator is a character who relays the story from her own perspective, which is different from the writer. If you don't trust the narrator's version of the story, you may have encountered an "unreliable narrator." The Latin root is narrare, "to tell or relate," or literally "to make acquainted with," from gnarus, "knowing."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

narrator narrators

The real star was Serling, “the ominous, otherworldly narrator and host” with jet-black hair and “cheekbones that looked carved from granite.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2026

A dazzling art exhibition is set to launch it, and our narrator will be handsomely paid for his assistance—writing promotional material, helping the artist with his research.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026

At one point I think the narrator becomes Elvis Presley?

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 9, 2026

But did you know actor Julie Hesmondhalgh is the voiceover narrator for the quiz show?

From BBC ● Oct. 4, 2026

I’m a narrator; you’d think I could be a little more eloquent.

From "The School for Whatnots" by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Yet, like hormonal teenagers writing in diaries, AIs aren’t the most reliable narrators of their inner lives.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 4, 2026

According to the complaint, Prabhakar had taught the story for nearly a decade without incident and used it in a unit on unsympathetic and unreliable narrators alongside works by Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver.

From Salon ● Aug. 2, 2026

In Homer’s “Odyssey,” about the hero’s 10-year quest to return home from the Trojan War, the story zigzags among locations, time periods and narrators.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 20, 2026

If only the sorely miscast Dano had the weight to sell this guided tour of corruption — a role that could have been in the vein of one of Scorsese’s charismatic motormouth narrators.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 15, 2026

Most of the narrators had joined the circle around George, as had a few of the barnyard animals, who were supposed to be clucking and mooing onstage.

From "George" by Alex Gino

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Related Words

• author
• chronicler
• novelist
• writer

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