informant

See also: Informant

English

Etymology

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.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ɪnˈfɔːmənt/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ɪnˈfɔɹmənt/

• Audio (UK):

  (file)

Noun

informant (plural informants)

2. One who relays confidential information to someone, especially to the police; an informer.
   • 2022 October 16, Jenna Scherer, “An enticing House Of The Dragon crowns Westeros' new ruler”, in AV Club‎^[1]:

     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.

   • 2026 July 29, Nicholas Muhoro, “Amy Billig Vanished While Hitchhiking Through Coconut Grove. Then the Calls Began”, in Skip Boring‎^[2], archived from the original on 31 July 2026:

     Shortly after Amy went missing, an informant told investigators that a member of the Pagans Outlaw Motorcycle Club had bragged about snatching a girl matching Amy’s description in Coconut Grove.

4. (linguistics, proscribed in the US and Canada) A 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.

   Synonym: consultant (preferred term in North America)

   • 1977, A. E. Kibrik, The methodology of field investigations in linguistics:

     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.

   • 2003, Sergei Nirenburg, H. L. Somers, Yorick Wilks, Readings in machine translation, page 116:

     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.

Synonyms

• See Thesaurus:informant

Derived terms

• confidential informant
• disinformant
• misinformant
• multiinformant

Translations

one who relays confidential information

Albanian: please add this translation if you can Arabic: مُخْبِر m (muḵbir), مُخْبِرة f (muḵbira) Armenian: please add this translation if you can Belarusian: інфарма́тар m (infarmátar), інфарма́тарка f (infarmátarka) Bulgarian: доно́сник (bg) m (donósnik), доно́сница f (donósnica), доно́сничка f (donósnička), информа́тор (bg) m (informátor), информа́торка f (informátorka) Chinese: Mandarin: 提供消息的人 (tígōng xiāoxī de rén), 告密者 (zh) (gàomìzhě), 線人 / 线人 (zh) (xiànrén), 舉報人 / 举报人 (jǔbàorén), 檢舉人 / 检举人 (jiǎnjǔrén) Czech: informátor (cs) m, informátorka f Danish: informant c Esperanto: informanto Estonian: please add this translation if you can Finnish: ilmiantaja (fi), tiedonantaja (fi), informantti French: informateur (fr) m, informatrice (fr) f Georgian: please add this translation if you can German: Informant (de) m, Informantin (de) f Greek: πληροφοριοδότης (el) m (pliroforiodótis) Ancient Greek: συκοφάντης m (sukophántēs) Hebrew: רֶגֶל (he) Hindi: गुप्तचर (hi) m or f (guptacar) Hungarian: besúgó (hu) Indonesian: informan (id), narasumber (id) Italian: delatore (it) m, informatore (it) m, spia (it) Japanese: 情報提供者 (じょうほうていきょうしゃ, jōhō teikyōsha), インフォーマント (infōmanto) Kurdish: Central Kurdish: ئاگادار (agadar) Latin: dēlātor m Latvian: please add this translation if you can Lithuanian: please add this translation if you can Macedonian: кодош m (kodoš), доушник m (doušnik) Māori: kaiwhāki, kaiwhakaatu Old English: melda m Persian: مخبر (fa) (moxber) Polish: informator (pl) m, informatorka (pl) f Portuguese: informante (pt) m or f, delator (pt) m Romanian: informator (ro) m, informatoare (ro) f Russian: осведоми́тель (ru) m (osvedomítelʹ), осведоми́тельница (ru) f (osvedomítelʹnica), информа́тор (ru) m (informátor) Slovak: informátor m, informátorka f Spanish: informante (es) m or f Tagalog: tagahimaton, impormante Turkish: please add this translation if you can Ukrainian: інформа́тор m (informátor), інформа́торка f (informátorka)

lingustics: native speaker who acts as a reference

Arabic: مُخْبِر m (muḵbir) Bulgarian: please add this translation if you can Finnish: kielenopas (fi), informantti Hungarian: adatközlő (hu), adatszolgáltató (hu)

See also

• name names

Catalan

Verb

informant

1. gerund of informar

Dutch

Etymology

Borrowed, more probably from French or German than from English due to the word's ultimate stress.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˌɪn.fɔrˈmɑnt/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: in‧for‧mant
• Rhymes: -ɑnt

Noun

informant m (plural informanten, diminutive informantje n)

1. informer, informant

French

Participle

informant

1. present participle of informer

Further reading

• “informant”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012

Latin

Verb

īnfōrmant

1. third-person plural present active indicative of īnfōrmō