Word.ws English Dictionary

agent-provocateur

agent-provocateur is the alternative form of agent provocateur.

Meaning of agent provocateur

Noun

agent provocateur (plural agents provocateurs)

  1. A person who secretly disrupts a group's activities from within the group, particularly by encouraging or committing illegal acts to discredit the group or expose them to prosecution; an instigator, troublemaker.
    • "This agent-provocateur business is quite foreign to British justice."1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “In which the Reader is Shown the Habits of a Notorious Criminal”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia...

Forms of agent-provocateur

pluralagents-provocateurs

Questions about agent-provocateur

What is agent-provocateur the alternative form of?
Agent-provocateur is the alternative form of agent provocateur.

Words near agent-provocateur in the dictionary

  1. agent participle
  2. agent participles
  3. agent provocateur
  4. agent-general
  5. agent-oriented
  6. agent-provocateur
  7. agente provocateuse
  8. agente provocatrice
  9. agented
  10. agentes provocateuses
  11. agentes provocatrices

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: agent-provocateur (page history and authors); agent provocateur (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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