agent provocateur

Definitions

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.

Equivalents

Examples

“"This agent-provocateur business is quite foreign to British justice."”

“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.”

“Suspecting that the man was an agent provocateur sent by the Prince, Pottinger told him that regrettably he had neither the knowledge nor the authority to instruct him in this or any other religion.”

“The criminalisation of protest⟳ has been aided by the director of public prosecution's recent guidelines on prosecuting protesters, which fail⟳ to account for the role of the police in prompting violence at demonstrations through tactics such as kettling, the use⟳ of batons, agents provocateurs and undercover policing.”

CEFR level