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Witness vs Informant - What's the difference?

witness | informant |

As nouns the difference between witness and informant

is that witness is attestation of a fact or event; testimony while informant is one who relays confidential information to someone, especially to the police; an informer.

As a verb witness

is to furnish proof of, to show.

witness

English

Noun

(es)
  • Attestation of a fact or event; testimony.
    • She can bear witness , since she was there at the time.
  • * Shakespeare
    • May we with the witness of a good conscience, pursue him with any further revenge?
  • One who sees or has personal knowledge of something.
    • As a witness to the event, I can confirm that he really said that.
  • * Shakespeare
    • Thyself art witness I am betrothed.
  • * R. Hall
    • Upon my looking round, I was witness to appearances which filled me with melancholy and regret.
  • Someone called to give evidence in a court.
    • The witness for the prosecution did not seem very credible.
  • Something that serves as evidence; a sign.
  • * Bible, Genesis xxxi. 51, 52
    • Laban said to Jacob, This heap be witness', and this pillar be ' witness .

    Derived terms

    * expert witness * eyewitness * key witness * principal witness

    Verb

    (es)
  • To furnish proof of, to show.
    • This certificate witnesses his presence on that day.
  • * 1667': round he throws his baleful eyes / That '''witness'd huge affliction and dismay — John Milton, ''Paradise Lost , Book 1 ll. 56-7
  • To take as evidence.
  • *
  • To see or gain knowledge of through experience.
    • He witnessed the accident.
  • * R. Hall
    • This is but a faint sketch of the incalculable calamities and horrors we must expect, should we ever witness the triumphs of modern infidelity.
  • * Marshall
    • General Washington did not live to witness the restoration of peace.
  • To present personal religious testimony; to preach at (someone) or on behalf of.
  • * 1998 , "Niebuhr, Reinhold", Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy , volume 6?, page 842
    • Instead, Niebuhr's God was the God witnessed to in the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, the Bible of the Christian world.
  • To see the execution of (a legal instrument), and subscribe it for the purpose of establishing its authenticity.
    • to witness a bond or a deed

    Synonyms

    * certify

    Anagrams

    *

    informant

    English

    (wikipedia informant)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • One who relays confidential information to someone, especially to the police; an informer.
  • (linguistics) A native speaker who acts as a linguistic reference for a language being studied. The informant demonstrates native pronunciation, provides grammaticality judgments regarding linguistic well-formedness, and may also explain cultural references and other important contextual information.
  • * 1977 , A. E. Kibrik, The methodology of field investigations in linguistics
    • The only material the linguist has to begin with are the informant' s grammatical utterances in the target language pronounced arbitrarily in a natural or assigned communicative situation or stimulated artificially by the investigator.
  • * 2003 , Sergei Nirenburg, H. L. Somers, Yorick Wilks, Readings in machine translation (page 116)
    • The informant learns his language by formal training and, more importantly, by constant exposure to its use. He cannot repeat to the linguist what he has never seen or heard.

    Synonyms

    * (one who relays confidential information ): blabber, gossip, narc, stool pigeon, tattletale, rat, canary, snitch, stoolie, squealer, grass, bigmouth * See also

    See also

    * name names ----