as in informant
a person who provides information about another's wrongdoing
a canary who was singing and giving up the names of some of the city's most notorious drug lords
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of canary
Earlier this morning, Taylor Nation, her in-house marketing team, posted like a canary in a coal mine, alerting the fandom to a 12th chapter.
—
Bryan West, USA Today, 12 Aug. 2025
Charlie Sway, the fund manager, was an old prep-school friend, who knew that Jaron had an eye for the sleeping dog, an ear for the silent canary.
—Annie Proulx, New Yorker, 10 Aug. 2025
Media attention has focused on the travails of big cities such as Los Angeles, but smaller cities might be the canaries in the coal mine.
—The Editorial Board, Oc Register, 6 Aug. 2025
In addition, the Trump Administration’s disbanding of the Federal Statistics Advisory Committee in March both eliminated one of the main engines for enhancing agency performance and, perhaps, in what should have been a concerning harbinger, abolished the canary in the data integrity coal mine.
—Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Time, 2 Aug. 2025
See All Example Sentences for canary
Bryan West, USA Today, 12 Aug. 2025
Charlie Sway, the fund manager, was an old prep-school friend, who knew that Jaron had an eye for the sleeping dog, an ear for the silent canary.
—Annie Proulx, New Yorker, 10 Aug. 2025
Media attention has focused on the travails of big cities such as Los Angeles, but smaller cities might be the canaries in the coal mine.
—The Editorial Board, Oc Register, 6 Aug. 2025
In addition, the Trump Administration’s disbanding of the Federal Statistics Advisory Committee in March both eliminated one of the main engines for enhancing agency performance and, perhaps, in what should have been a concerning harbinger, abolished the canary in the data integrity coal mine.
—Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Time, 2 Aug. 2025
See All Example Sentences for canary
Recent Examples of Synonyms for canary
Noun
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But an unnamed police informant told other police from Prince George’s County, Maryland that Abrego Garcia was tied to MS-13.—
Nick Penzenstadler,
USA Today,
8 Sep. 2025
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But being an informant implies some formal connection and ongoing relationship with the FBI.—
ABC News,
ABC News,
7 Sep. 2025
Noun
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Frizer and Skeres were fraudsters, and the sinister Poley was an informer, crucial to the exposure of the Babington Plot.—
Anthony Lane,
New Yorker,
8 Sep. 2025
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Option 2: If one prisoner informs while the other stays silent, the informer will go free while the silent one receives the harshest sentence.—
Michael Ashley,
Forbes.com,
29 July 2025
Noun
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As the connections strengthened, the rats showed significant functional recovery.—
Aamir Khollam,
Interesting Engineering,
5 Sep. 2025
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Roughly half of all the mammal species on the planet are rodents such as rats, mice, squirrels, and hamsters and they are found on every single continent except for Antarctica.—
Laura Baisas,
Popular Science,
4 Sep. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Canary.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/canary. Accessed 12 Sep. 2025.
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