# agent

Pronunciation: say "AY-juhnt" /ˈeɪ.d͡ʒənt/

## Noun

1. A person authorized to act for another, called the principal, handling business or decisions on that person's behalf.
   - Simple: A person who is allowed to do business or make decisions for someone else.
   - _While she was working overseas, her agent signed the lease and paid the deposit on her behalf._
   - _Shareholders appointed agents to vote on their behalf at the meeting._
2. A force, cause, or substance (chemical, biological, thermal, or otherwise) that has the power to produce an effect.
   - Simple: Something that causes a change or effect, like a chemical or a germ.
   - _Researchers tested the new antiviral agent on infected cells._
   - _Certain chemical agents break down stains far faster than soap._
3. A person who works for an intelligence agency, either as an officer of it or as someone recruited to help its efforts.
   - Simple: A person who secretly gathers information for a country's spy service.
   - _The agent operated under deep cover in the capital for three years._
   - _Several agents were exposed when the network was betrayed._
4. A person who looks for work for another and negotiates the terms of the deal between the worker and the employer.
   - Simple: A person who finds jobs for someone and arranges the deal with the employer.
   - _A literary agent secured a publishing deal for the first-time novelist._
   - _Talent agents take a percentage of whatever their clients earn._
5. A respectful form of address for a law enforcement officer, especially a federal one rather than a member of the police. *(US)*
   - Simple: A polite way to address a law enforcement officer who is not a police officer.
   - _Agent Reyes, the warrant has just been signed._
   - _Right this way, Agent. The witness is waiting inside._
6. In computing, a program or component that performs tasks or exchanges information on behalf of a user, client, server, or other program, sometimes acting autonomously.
   - Simple: A program that handles tasks for a user or another program on a computer.
   - _The monitoring agent reports system errors back to the central server._
   - _Intelligent agents negotiate with one another to schedule shared resources._
7. A being that exerts power or has the capacity to act.
   - Simple: A person or thing that can act and make things happen.
   - _Philosophers ask whether a moral agent must be free to choose otherwise._
   - _We treat adults as responsible agents accountable for their choices._
8. In grammar, the participant in a clause that carries out the action, whether it appears as the subject or inside a "by" phrase.
   - Simple: The person or thing that does the action in a sentence.
   - _In the passive sentence, the agent appears after the word "by"._
   - _Linguists mark which noun is the agent and which is the patient._

## Other meanings

- (noun) A cheat who works with crooked casino staff to win dishonestly.

## Origin

Latin agere meant to drive, lead, conduct, manage, perform or do, and its present active participle agēns is the source of the word.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/agent (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).