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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Once behind bars, Limon-Gonzalez discovered an unnamed government informant had given up information about him in December 2022, authorities say.—
Nate Gartrell,
Mercury News,
29 Aug. 2025
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Smith and Bean were found guilty of one count of tampering with a witness, victim or informant, and they were acquitted on the three other counts against them.—
Phil Helsel,
NBC news,
28 Aug. 2025
Noun
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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
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The Nazis set up secret squads in the camps to conduct beatings and killings of prisoners thought to be too friendly with U.S. officials or were accused of being informers.—
Peter Lucas,
Boston Herald,
10 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 9 Sep. 2025.
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