Informant

Quick meaning: Informant is a noun meaning One who relays confidential information to someone, especially to the police; an informer.

Meaning

One who relays confidential information to someone, especially to the police; an informer.

More Meanings

1. (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.

Example Sentences

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.

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.

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.

Word Forms

• informants

Synonyms for informant

Depending on context, synonyms include consultant, abaddon, accuser, beefer, bewrayer, bigmouth.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include witness, source, whistle-blower, informer, whistleblower, insider.

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