informant
- 01 C1 Advanced
someone who secretly gives information to the police or a government agency about illegal activities.
a person who provides privileged or confidential information about a person or organization to an agency, typically the police.
Simple“The police caught the gang thanks to a secret informant who worked for them.”
In context“The detective refused to reveal the identity of his informant, fearing that any leak would compromise the ongoing undercover investigation.”
- 02 C2 Proficiency
a native speaker who provides information about their language to a researcher or student.
a native speaker who provides linguistic data, such as pronunciation and grammar judgments, to a researcher.
Simple“The researcher spent months working with a local informant to document the dying language.”
In context“Field linguists rely on the intuitive judgments of the native informant to determine which syntactic structures are considered well-formed within the community.”
UsageIn modern linguistics, 'consultant' or 'language helper' is often preferred to avoid the negative connotations of the police sense.
Teacher's tipWhile historically standard in linguistics, this term is now often replaced by 'consultant' to avoid implying the person is a 'snitch'.
Synonymsconsultantlanguage assistant
“Sources include defectors, informants and individuals who remain embedded within movements while passing information to outsiders.”
“In July, the court filing indicated that an unnamed FBI informant began communicating with Bowie through encrypted apps.”
From inform + -ant.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.