commentator
Americannoun
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commentators
plural
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a person who discusses news, sports events, weather, or the like, as on television or radio.
-
a person who makes commentaries.
noun
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a person who provides a spoken commentary for a broadcast, film, etc, esp of a sporting event
-
a person who writes notes on a text, event, etc
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of commentator
1350–1400; Middle English < Late Latin commentātor interpreter, equivalent to commentā ( rī ) to interpret ( Latin: to think about, prepare, discuss, write, perhaps frequentative of comminīscī to devise; see comment) + Latin -tor -tor
Explanation
A person who analyzes and discusses topics in politics and sports is called a commentator. If you want to hear opinions on the news rather than the news itself, listen to commentators. A reporter delivers the news and a commentator analyzes it, sometimes within the same news program. If you're a top sports commentator, you may become an even bigger household name than the players you are discussing, and you may pull in just as much money too. Political commentators, who often offer more opinion rather than analysis, are also sometimes called pundits or talking heads.
Vocabulary lists containing commentator
myPerspectives 10.2
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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:
Political commentator Ajoy Bose said the government was caught between a "rock and hard place" while seeking to prevent a repeat of the massive CJP protests in July.
From Barron's ● Oct. 16, 2026
A TV presenter and a social media commentator have apologised and will pay damages to the deputy leader of the Green Party after wrongly suggesting he participated in disorder.
From BBC ● Oct. 16, 2026
On Friday, Trump announced his new pick for White House press secretary, Katie Zacharia, a 42-year-old conservative commentator and public relations liaison who frequently appears on Fox.
From Salon ● Oct. 9, 2026
A widely published essayist and commentator, he is the author of five books, most recently “The Religious Revolution: The Making of Modern Spirituality, 1848-98.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 7, 2026
The only memory that matters now is the one where his coach made him pack up his locker and suggested a new career route, like being a ringside commentator or becoming a coach himself.
From "They Both Die at the End" by Adam Silvera
It became the subject of a series of Pogo comic strips and many commentators took the article as strictly a tongue-in-cheek comment on population fears.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 17, 2026
Molecules that regulate sleep and appetite or methods for editing genes are some of the research fields commentators say could be contenders for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry announced Wednesday.
From Barron's ● Oct. 7, 2026
To the media and to outraged internet commentators, it didn’t matter that two-thirds of Latino men had responded that each of those three issues was “very important” or “somewhat important.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 25, 2026
Some economists and financial commentators have linked that behavior to economic pessimism and rising living costs.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 24, 2026
“I've just seen the first black president,” Chris Matthews declared to his fellow commentators on NBC.
From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama
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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.
