interlocutor.

1. A person taking part in a conversation or dialogue, especially the person someone is addressing.

2. A person who speaks for a group or organization in discussions, often to help reach an agreement.

3. Historically, the performer who led dialogue and questioned the end performers in a minstrel show.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• a willing interlocutor
• an intellectual interlocutor
• an interlocutor in a debate
• an imagined interlocutor

On the page

She waited for her interlocutor to finish before challenging the premise.

The essay treats the earlier critic as an intellectual interlocutor rather than an authority to be followed.

The committee sought an interlocutor who could speak for the smaller associations.

Both delegations accepted her as an interlocutor, although they disagreed about the terms of the talks.

The theatre history identifies the interlocutor as the performer directing the exchanges.

Usage notes

Count noun: an interlocutor; plural interlocutors. Gender-neutral in current general use. Interlocutor in a discussion, interlocutor on an issue, interlocutor with whom someone speaks. No verb conjugations or comparative forms. Register: formal. Commonness: uncommon in everyday speech; moderately common in scholarly and diplomatic writing (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).