Word.ws English Dictionary

agent provocateur

/ˌæʒɒ̃ pɹəˌvɒkəˈtɜː/US/ˌɑʒɑnt pɹəˌvɔkəˈtɝ/

agent provocateur noun: 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.

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...
    • I was told afterwards—quite possibly it was true—that agents provocateurs were touching off masses of explosive in order to increase the general noise and panic.1938 April, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter IX, in Homage to Catalonia, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC

agent provocateur meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Arabic and Malay

agent provocateur in Tamil

உள் உளவாள்

agent provocateur in Urdu

فتنہ انگیز جاسوس

agent provocateur in Arabic

a person who disrupts a group's activities from within
مُبَلِّغ مُشَارِك muballiḡ mušārik

agent provocateur in Malay

a person who disrupts a group's activities from within
ejen provokasi, agen provokasi
More languagesFewer languages
agent provocateur in Indonesian
agen provokator
agent provocateur in Persian
آژان پرووکاتور âžân provokâtor, مأمور تحریک ma'mur-e tahrik

Forms of agent provocateur

pluralagents provocateurs

Origin of agent provocateur

Borrowed from French agent provocateur (literally “provocative agent”).

Questions about agent provocateur

What does agent provocateur mean?
Agent provocateur means 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.
What is agent provocateur in Tamil?
Agent provocateur in Tamil is உள் உளவாள். See Agent provocateur meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is agent provocateur?
Agent provocateur is a noun.
How do you pronounce agent provocateur?
Agent provocateur is pronounced /ˌɑʒɑnt pɹəˌvɔkəˈtɝ/ (US).
What is the plural of agent provocateur?
The plural of agent provocateur is agents provocateurs.

Words near agent provocateur in the dictionary

  1. agent nouns
  2. agent of influence
  3. Agent Orange
  4. agent participle
  5. agent participles
  6. agent provocateur
  7. agent-general
  8. agent-oriented
  9. agent-provocateur
  10. agente provocateuse
  11. agente provocatrice

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: agent provocateur (page history and authors); agent provocateur (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); agent provocateur (Urdu Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-agent provocateur.wav.

Cite this entry: “agent provocateur.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/agent_provocateur. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.