Word.ws English Dictionary

agents provocateurs

agents provocateurs is the plural 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...

Origin of agents provocateurs

Borrowed from French agents provocateurs, using French plural rules.

Questions about agents provocateurs

What is agents provocateurs the plural of?
Agents provocateurs is the plural of agent provocateur.

Words near agents provocateurs in the dictionary

  1. agentlike
  2. agentries
  3. agentry
  4. agents
  5. agents general
  6. agents provocateurs
  7. agents-general
  8. agentship
  9. agentships
  10. agentspace
  11. agentspaces

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: agents provocateurs (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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Cite this entry: “agents provocateurs.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/agents_provocateurs. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.