CONFIDANT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does confidant mean? 

• CONFIDANT (noun)
  The noun CONFIDANT has 1 sense:

1. someone to whom private matters are confided

  Familiarity information: CONFIDANT used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CONFIDANT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Someone to whom private matters are confided

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

confidant; intimate

Hypernyms ("confidant" is a kind of...):

friend (a person you know well and regard with affection and trust)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "confidant"):

confidante (a female confidant)

repository; secretary (a person to whom a secret is entrusted)

Derivation:

confide (reveal in private; tell confidentially)

 Context examples 

See the advantages of a cabman as a confidant.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

You are sixteen now, quite old enough to be my confidant, and my experience will be useful to you by-and-by, perhaps, in your own affairs of this sort.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I had only one confidant—my brother Mycroft.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He was a great confidant of Long John Silver, and so the mention of his name leads me on to speak of our ship's cook, Barbecue, as the men called him.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

So reasoned Edmund, till his father made him the confidant of a scheme which placed Fanny's chance of seeing the second lieutenant of H.M.S. Thrush in all his glory in another light.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Know, that in the course of your future life you will often find yourself elected the involuntary confidant of your acquaintances' secrets: people will instinctively find out, as I have done, that it is not your forte to tell of yourself, but to listen while others talk of themselves; they will feel, too, that you listen with no malevolent scorn of their indiscretion, but with a kind of innate sympathy; not the less comforting and encouraging because it is very unobtrusive in its manifestations.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Who makes you their confidant?

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

I gave a cry of surprise, threw up my arms to cover my face, and, rushing to my confidant, the Lascar, entreated him to prevent anyone from coming up to me.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

"Well, I've left two stories with a newspaperman, and he's to give his answer next week," whispered Jo, in her confidant's ear.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Instead of being sent for out of the room, and seeing him first, and having to spread the happy news through the house, Sir Thomas, with a very reasonable dependence, perhaps, on the nerves of his wife and children, had sought no confidant but the butler, and had been following him almost instantaneously into the drawing-room.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)