INFORMER

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does informer mean? 

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

1. one who reveals confidential information in return for money

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• INFORMER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

One who reveals confidential information in return for money

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

betrayer; blabber; informer; rat; squealer

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

informant; source (a person who supplies information)

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

canary; fink; sneak; sneaker; snitch; snitcher; stool pigeon; stoolie; stoolpigeon (someone acting as an informer or decoy for the police)

copper's nark; nark (an informer or spy working for the police)

grass; supergrass (a police informer who implicates many people)

Derivation:

inform (act as an informer)

 Context examples 

Thomas Mugridge is a sneak, a spy, an informer.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

The first I shall mention, relates to informers.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

If a gentleman was the victim of spies, intruders, and informers (but still naming no names), that was his own pleasure.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

This Blessington or Sutton, who was the worst of the gang, turned informer.

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

Everybody knows you are the most selfish, heartless creature in existence: and I know your spiteful hatred towards me: I have had a specimen of it before in the trick you played me about Lord Edwin Vere: you could not bear me to be raised above you, to have a title, to be received into circles where you dare not show your face, and so you acted the spy and informer, and ruined my prospects for ever.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

She named no names, she said; let them the cap fitted, wear it; but spies, intruders, and informers, especially in widders' weeds (this clause was underlined), she had ever accustomed herself to look down upon.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

But I defy the treasurer, or his two informers (I will name them, and let them make the best of it) Clustril and Drunlo, to prove that any person ever came to me incognito, except the secretary Reldresal, who was sent by express command of his imperial majesty, as I have before related.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Beginning it with that statement of universal application, which fitted every occurrence of her life, namely, that she was a mother herself, she went on to inform me that she had once seen very different days, but that at all periods of her existence she had had a constitutional objection to spies, intruders, and informers.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

For having strictly examined all the persons of greatest name in the courts of princes, for a hundred years past, I found how the world had been misled by prostitute writers, to ascribe the greatest exploits in war, to cowards; the wisest counsel, to fools; sincerity, to flatterers; Roman virtue, to betrayers of their country; piety, to atheists; chastity, to sodomites; truth, to informers: how many innocent and excellent persons had been condemned to death or banishment by the practising of great ministers upon the corruption of judges, and the malice of factions: how many villains had been exalted to the highest places of trust, power, dignity, and profit: how great a share in the motions and events of courts, councils, and senates might be challenged by bawds, whores, pimps, parasites, and buffoons.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

I had no occasion of bribing, flattering, or pimping, to procure the favour of any great man, or of his minion; I wanted no fence against fraud or oppression: here was neither physician to destroy my body, nor lawyer to ruin my fortune; no informer to watch my words and actions, or forge accusations against me for hire: here were no gibers, censurers, backbiters, pickpockets, highwaymen, housebreakers, attorneys, bawds, buffoons, gamesters, politicians, wits, splenetics, tedious talkers, controvertists, ravishers, murderers, robbers, virtuosos; no leaders, or followers, of party and faction; no encouragers to vice, by seducement or examples; no dungeon, axes, gibbets, whipping-posts, or pillories; no cheating shopkeepers or mechanics; no pride, vanity, or affectation; no fops, bullies, drunkards, strolling whores, or poxes; no ranting, lewd, expensive wives; no stupid, proud pedants; no importunate, overbearing, quarrelsome, noisy, roaring, empty, conceited, swearing companions; no scoundrels raised from the dust upon the merit of their vices, or nobility thrown into it on account of their virtues; no lords, fiddlers, judges, or dancing-masters.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)