rapporteur

noun

rap·por·teur ˌra-ˌpȯr-ˈtər

: a person who gives reports (as at a meeting of a learned society)

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Rapporteur was adopted into English in the 16th century and is a descendant of the Middle French verb rapporter, meaning "to bring back, report, or refer." Other descendants of rapporter in English include rapportage (a rare synonym of reportage, in the sense of "writing intended to give an account of observed or documented events") and rapport ("a harmonious relationship," as in "The young teacher had a good rapport with the students"). The words report, reporter, reportage, etc., are also distant relatives of rapporteur; all can ultimately be traced back to the Latin prefix re-, meaning "back, again, or against," and the Latin word portare, meaning "to carry."

Examples of rapporteur in a Sentence

He was selected to be the UN's rapporteur on nuclear energy.

Recent Examples on the Web The speechwriters and special rapporteurs live in their bubbles. —

Benjamin Weinthal, Fox News, 29 Oct. 2023 Agnès Callamard, head of Amnesty International and a former U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings who investigated Khashoggi’s death, decried the geopolitics — the business as usual — that has denied genuine justice to Khashoggi and his family. —

Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, 4 Oct. 2023 Decades later, she is best known as the U.N. special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples from 2014 to 2020. —

Washington Post Staff, Washington Post, 3 Oct. 2023 In the interest of transparency, the collaboration was monitored by an independent rapporteur, whose report was also published in Science on Thursday. —

Brandy Zadrozny, NBC News, 27 July 2023 The rapporteur advised against one, citing concerns that sensitive national security materials could not be examined in public. —

Samantha Schmidt, Washington Post, 22 Sep. 2023 The expert team, appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council, includes Richard Bennett, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, and Farida Shaheed, special rapporteur on the right to education. —

Arkansas Online, 26 Nov. 2022 Months later, the false positives scandal came to light, the United Nations sent a special rapporteur to the country and Uribe removed Montoya and other military officials from their roles. —

Diana Durán, Washington Post, 30 Aug. 2023 That May, two special rapporteurs from the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights finally wrote to the Saudi government, noting that at least two of the princesses were apparently being starved. —

Heidi Blake, The New Yorker, 28 June 2023 See More

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'rapporteur.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.