informant

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin informāns, the present participle of informō (“to train, instruct, educate”), the source of inform.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} The OED notes that the earliest English use, an adjective in philosophy, follows a post-classical Latin use of the participle, and that the noun may also have been formed independently from the English verb with the suffix -ant;^[3] the Shorter Oxford takes the noun that way.^[7] Johnson (1755) derived it from French.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

As an adjective in philosophy, of a form, making up the essential nature of the thing it shapes: 1632.^[3] As a noun, a person who gives information about a fact or event: 1641.^[3] Merriam-Webster dates the noun to 1657, Dictionary.com to 1655–65 and Etymonline to the 1690s.^[4][6][2]

Semantic evolution

The noun first meant simply someone who gives information, and Johnson (1755) still defined it as one who gives information or instruction.^[3][8] The OED records it in the sense of an informer, one who reports others to the authorities, from 1645,^[3] although Etymonline finds this use only from 1783, and only occasionally, and notes that informer is the older and more usual word in both senses.^[2] In the 17th century it could also mean something that animates or inspires, a sense that soon died out.^[3][7] From 1799, in M. Park's Travels, it was used of a person from whom a traveller, and later a linguist or anthropologist, gathers information about a language or culture.^[3][7][4]

Timeline

• 1632 – adjective, in philosophy, of a form: making up the essence of a thing.^[3]
• 1641 – a person who gives information.^[3]
• 1645 – an informer.^[3]
• 1661 – something that animates or inspires (obsolete).^[3][7]
• 1799 – a person who supplies information about a language or culture to an investigator.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A person who gives information: Her informant at the ministry had been right about the date.^[4][3][7]
2. An informer, especially one who passes information to the police.^[4][3][7]
3. A person who supplies a linguist or anthropologist with information about a language, dialect or culture.^[4][3][7]
4. (obsolete, 1661) Something that animates or inspires.^[3][7]

Related words

• inform
• informer
• information
• informative
• form

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.