Informant Meaning
/ɪnˈfɔːmənt/Definition, CEFR level C1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounOne who relays confidential information to someone, especially to the police; an informer.
nounA native speaker who acts as a linguistic reference for a language being studied. The informant demonstrates native pronunciation, provides grammaticality judgments regarding linguistic well-formedness, and may also explain cultural references and other important contextual information.
Sentence Examples
I cannot disclose any information about the informant.
Tom is an informant for the FBI.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The experienced detective relied on a secret ____ to learn the criminal's plan last night.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The police received a secret tip from a reliable ____ that led them to the stolen goods.
Word Origin & History
Etymology tree English inform Proto-Indo-European *-onts Latin -ns Latin -āns Old French -antbor. Proto-Indo-European *-onts Proto-Germanic *-ndz Proto-West Germanic *-andī Old English -ende Middle English -ant English -ant English informant From inform + -ant.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"One of her chief informants is Alicent’s handmaiden Talya (Alexis Rabin), whose inside info runs so deep that she’s the first to catch wind of Viserys’ death."
— 2022 October 16, Jenna Scherer, “An enticing House Of The Dragon crowns Westeros' new ruler”, in AV Club:
"The only material the linguist has to begin with are the informant's grammatical utterances in the target language pronounced arbitrarily in a natural or assigned communicative situation or stimulated artificially by the investigator."
— 1977, A. E. Kibrik, The methodology of field investigations in linguistics:
"The informant learns his language by formal training and, more importantly, by constant exposure to its use. He cannot repeat to the linguist what he has never seen or heard."
— 2003, Sergei Nirenburg, H. L. Somers, Yorick Wilks, Readings in machine translation, page 116:
Explore More C1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The experienced detective relied on a secret ____ to learn the criminal's plan last night.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The police received a secret tip from a reliable ____ that led them to the stolen goods.