Meaning & use
betrayer
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Meaning
nouncountableformalliterary
A person who breaks someone's trust, for example by giving help to enemies or revealing secrets.
Grammar: Countable: a betrayer, the betrayers. Often followed by of: a betrayer of secrets.
Patterns
- a betrayer of something
- a betrayer of someone
The rebels never discovered which of them was the betrayer.
He was called a betrayer by the friends whose secret he had told.
In the play, the betrayer kisses his master before handing him over.
Word forms
| plural | betrayers |
|---|
Common combinations
- betrayer of trust
- A doctor who shares private records is a betrayer of trust.
- branded a betrayer
- After the leak, he was branded a betrayer by his own team.
- a cowardly betrayer
- The story paints the minister as a cowardly betrayer of his king.
- betrayer of secrets
- No one trusted him anymore, since he was known as a betrayer of secrets.
- betrayer of the cause
- The group treated anyone who spoke to the press as a betrayer of the cause.
Synonyms and how they differ
- traitor
- Traitor is the usual everyday word and often means someone disloyal to a country or group, while betrayer is more literary and focuses on the broken trust.
- turncoat
- Turncoat stresses switching sides openly, not acting in secret like a betrayer.
- double-crosser
- Double-crosser is informal and describes someone who cheats a partner they pretended to support.
- informer
- An informer passes information to authorities, which may or may not break a personal trust.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: betrayer or betrayal?
betrayer vs betrayal
A betrayer is the person who breaks trust, while a betrayal is the act itself.
Practice
He was branded a ___ after he leaked the team's secret plans to a rival.
Choose one answer.
After branded a we need a noun for a person, and betrayer is the person who breaks trust. Betrayal names the act, not the person.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “betrayer”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.