narrator

American  

[nar-ey-ter, na-rey‑, nar-uh‑] / ˈnær eɪ tər, næˈreɪ‑, ˈnær ə‑ /

Or narrater

noun

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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Etymology

Origin of narrator

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

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

In his short story “Intimacy,” Raymond Carver uses the metaphor of “dead leaves” to describe the unresolved wounds between the narrator and his ex-wife.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 3, 2026

“The bond between us was never conventional,” narrator Aaron tells us.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 1, 2026

Now, Matarazzo is set to play Mark, Rent's narrator and a documentary filmmaker.

From BBC • May 19, 2026

Detours into Lindsay’s traumatic childhood, for example, and into her current profession as an audiobook narrator seem somewhat extraneous.

From The Wall Street Journal • May 15, 2026

I’d never seen a non-loser so excited about a narrator before.

From "Sparrow" by Sarah Moon

Related Words

• author
• chronicler
• novelist
• writer