How to Use informer in a Sentence

informer

noun
  • Richie, who had agreed to be an informer with the feds, gets cold feet and tells them nothing about any of this.
    — Gavin Edwards, New York Times, 17 Apr. 2016
  • Was there anything, he was asked in 2007, worse than being an informer?
    — Sam Roberts, New York Times, 8 June 2019
  • Today’s young people have become both informers and self-exposers.
    — Christian Schneider, National Review, 29 June 2023
  • The informer has a criminal record, mostly for theft, the Bee reported.
    — Bay Area News Group, The Mercury News, 28 Jan. 2025
  • Standing in his way are British spies, French informers and jealous colleagues.
    — Liza Foreman, The Hollywood Reporter, 10 Apr. 2024
  • No revolutionary could be sure whether anyone was a true comrade or a police informer.
    — Robert Service, Washington Post, 30 Oct. 2020
  • And so every regime invests in having student informers.
    — Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic, 23 Jan. 2026
  • But there are also tales of informers who pointed out potential prisoners to the police.
    — Naresh Fernandes, Quartz India, 6 Jan. 2020
  • The jail special handling deputies cultivated and utilized a group of informers.
    — Kelly Puente, Orange County Register, 13 June 2017
  • When a prison is a country, the smallest children can be unwitting informers and the most prosaic acts can be treasonous.
    — Kyle Smith, National Review, 26 Feb. 2020
  • The protesters don’t know the allegiances of the hospital staff, and worry about informers.
    — Jiayang Fan, The New Yorker, 9 Dec. 2019
  • These defendants are here on the strength of testimony given by a secret informer, neighbors or their own families.
    — Hamza Hendawi, Washington Post, 9 July 2018
  • The brother-in-law of one of the men was killed by militants last year, accused of being an informer for the Indian military.
    — Yasin Dar and Aijaz Hussain, Fox News, 6 Apr. 2018
  • After the war, the group began policing its own country, acting as informers and enforcers for the Islamic regime.
    — CNN, 3 Oct. 2019
  • The compression of the two heads within the rectangle and the informer’s slice of white teeth conspire to suggest the sinister and the unsavory.
    — Karen Wilkin, WSJ, 26 Sep. 2020
  • In order to locate the underground bunkers the Germans made use of dogs, listening devices, and informers. German troops used long-range weapons and flamethrowers to pulverize and torch the buildings, turning it into a blanket of flame and rubble.
    — Camille Fine, USA TODAY, 19 Apr. 2023
  • One of State Security’s main goals, as well as a central source of its strength, is turning civilians into informers.
    — Abraham Jiménez Enoa, The Dial, 19 May 2026
  • Television documentaries and news and magazine articles linked him to murders of informers and bombings that killed scores.
    — Robert D. McFadden, New York Times, 21 Mar. 2017
  • The terrifying teachers in her all-girl high school encourage informers and expound on the evils of overeating and unsanctioned pregnancy.
    — Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times, 26 Apr. 2018
  • The Ukrainian soldiers began to see Russian civilians as a hindrance — or worse, as potential informers who could give away their positions.
    — Ekaterina Bodyagina Nanna Heitmann, New York Times, 12 Feb. 2025
  • But the informer was now ensconced in the most secure British facility in Cork, the army’s Victoria Barracks.
    — New York Times, 13 Apr. 2022
  • The initial, rapid jihadi advance meant many residents were unable to flee, and townsfolk soon discovered the group had a hidden network of informers in Palmyra.
    — Patrick J. McDonnell, latimes.com, 21 May 2017
  • Security services also rely on informers to tell them who might be using Starlink, and search internet and social media traffic for signs it has been used.
    — David Rising, Los Angeles Times, 14 Jan. 2026
  • Over the past decade, Hamas has also executed 28 people, most of them alleged informers, after trials widely condemned as a sham.
    — Fares Akram, The Seattle Times, 5 June 2017
  • Still, as Steinberg narrates in grim but vivid strokes, her phone was tapped, her employers pressured into firing her, her friends and companions imprisoned or turned into informers.
    — Glenn Frankel, Washington Post, 9 June 2023
  • Frizer and Skeres were fraudsters, and the sinister Poley was an informer, crucial to the exposure of the Babington Plot.
    — Anthony Lane, New Yorker, 8 Sep. 2025
  • Over the past eight decades, the CCP has constructed a vast network of millions of informers and spies whose often-unpaid work has been critical to the regime’s survival.
    — Minxin Pei, Foreign Affairs, 6 Feb. 2024
  • In her deft portrayal of a teenager turned reluctant informer, Ruta Sepetys makes the case that trust, coupled with selfless courage, is the key to cracking autocratic rule.
    — Monitor Reviewers, The Christian Science Monitor, 20 Dec. 2022
  • In her deft portrayal of a teenager turned reluctant informer, Ruta Sepetys makes the case that trust, coupled with selfless courage, is the key to cracking autocratic rule.
    — Monitor Reviewers, The Christian Science Monitor, 16 Feb. 2022
  • The law also would have allowed foreign nationals, including the millions of Afghans living in Iran, to work as informers reporting women not wearing the hijab.
    — Amir Vahdat and Nasser Karimi, Los Angeles Times, 18 Dec. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'informer.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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