agent provocateur
a secret agent hired to incite suspected persons to some illegal action, outbreak, etc., that will make them liable to punishment.
Origin of agent provocateur
1Words Nearby agent provocateur
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use agent provocateur in a sentence
As he did this week, Carlson went so far as to feature specific supposed agent provocateurs — a “Person Two” and a “Person Three” who were named in the indictment of Thomas Caldwell.
Tucker Carlson and the desperate, shoddy search for Jan. 6 ‘provocateurs’ | Aaron Blake | December 10, 2021 | Washington Post“We basically associate ourselves as the La Perla or the agent provocateur for the transgender community,” Lauz said.
Introducing the First Lingerie Line for Transgender Women | Claire Stern | February 5, 2013 | THE DAILY BEASTHer sensibilities tend more toward, say, an agent provocateur bustier than business wear.
Inside the High-End Fashion Sensibility on CBS’s ‘The Good Wife’ | Jace Lacob | October 23, 2012 | THE DAILY BEASTOnce she overcame her shock, Esfandiari realized she was arrested because she was perceived as an agent provocateur.
I was looking about to find the German agent provocateur, but I failed to find him.
Spies of the Kaiser | William Le Queux
That is why one was never sure that the stranger who denounced Rasputin and his friends was not an agent-provocateur.
The Minister of Evil | William Le QueuxMy answer was that a study of many labor cases had taught me the methods of the agent provocateur.
The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition | Upton SinclairThe spy, the paid informer, the agent provocateur, play the same part now as in the sixteenth century.
Ten Tudor Statesmen | Arthur D. InnesHe found discrepancies in the accounts, and intimated that the Government had adopted the odious rôle of the agent provocateur.
The Annual Register 1914 | Anonymous
British Dictionary definitions for agent provocateur
/ French (aʒɑ̃ prɔvɔkatœr) /
a secret agent employed to provoke suspected persons to commit illegal acts and so be discredited or liable to punishment
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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