Definition
An informator is a Latin and Law Latin term meaning, simply, an informer — a person who brings information of a legal violation or offense to the attention of a court or prosecuting authority, typically for the purpose of initiating proceedings. The term appears almost exclusively in historical legal sources and carries no independent substantive meaning beyond its equivalence to "informer." It is a label for a procedural role, not a defined legal status in modern law.
In practice, the informator was the party who supplied the accusation or the underlying facts in proceedings initiated by information rather than by grand jury indictment. The term was used broadly and could apply to a private individual, a government officer, or a professional common informer.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not in standard modern use. The English word "informer" carries the common meanings of one who informs against another, often colloquially a police informant or snitch.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's defines "informer" as one who informs, and specifically one who informs against another person for violation of a law. The term "informator" does not appear as a distinct English entry in Webster's 1913.
The gap here is largely historical rather than semantic: in ordinary modern English, "informer" or "informant" are the functional equivalents, but these terms now carry strong connotations of covert intelligence-gathering or criminal cooperation with law enforcement. The historical legal informator had a more formal procedural role — a party of record who triggered legal process — rather than the shadowy operational role the modern "informant" implies.
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Common Confusion
INFORMATOR / INFORMER / INFORMANT: These three terms are functionally synonymous in historical legal usage, but researchers must distinguish them carefully by period and context. Informator is a strict Law Latin form appearing in older English and civil law sources. Informer is its direct English translation and has the widest use across common law sources. Informant is the modern term, now used primarily in criminal procedure to describe a confidential source providing intelligence to law enforcement — a role that is procedurally and operationally distinct from the historical informer who appeared in open court proceedings or qui tam actions.
INFORMATOR / RELATOR: In some historical contexts, the informator in a penal action resembles the relator in a qui tam proceeding. The distinction is that the relator formally appears as the private party on whose relation the Crown or state brings the action, while the informator may simply be the source of the accusation without necessarily being a named party.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering informator in historical legal documents — particularly pre-nineteenth century English, ecclesiastical, or civil law sources — should treat it as a straightforward synonym for informer and follow the cross-reference chain in any source that uses the term.
The term appears in the context of proceedings by information, a method of criminal prosecution initiated without a grand jury indictment. Understanding the informator's role is therefore essential to researching the history of prosecutorial procedure, particularly in English law before indictment-by-jury became the dominant model.
Burrill's entry is conspicuously truncated: the dictionary text immediately following the informator entry runs into unrelated material on degrees of family relationship (infra, above/below, grandfather, grandson, etc.) — almost certainly a typographical or scanning artifact in the source text, not substantive legal content connected to informator. Researchers using digitized versions of Burrill should be alert to this kind of interpolation when reading the surrounding context.
One practical trap: historical indexes and digests sometimes group informator, informer, and information (the charging instrument) under a single heading. The procedural instrument (an information) and the person who supplies it (the informator/informer) are distinct concepts, and conflating them will produce errors in research on criminal procedure history.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the entry at its most compact: "Informator. L. Lat. An informer. Spelman." The citation to Spelman refers to Sir Henry Spelman's Glossarium Archaiologicum, a foundational glossary of Law Latin and Anglo-Saxon legal terms, confirming the term's deep antiquity in English legal vocabulary.
Beyond Burrill, historical legal dictionaries treat informator as a direct Latin form requiring no independent elaboration — its meaning was considered transparent to any reader trained in Law Latin. Jacob's Law Dictionary and Tomlin's Law Dictionary both address informer at length without separately treating informator, reflecting the consensus that the terms are interchangeable.
What historical sources collectively miss: they do not address the moral and social evolution of the informer figure in English law. By the early modern period, professional informers — those who made a livelihood of bringing penal actions for statutory violations — were widely despised, and Parliament repeatedly legislated to curb abuses. This social and legislative history is invisible in bare dictionary entries but is critical context for any researcher studying enforcement of regulatory statutes in sixteenth- through eighteenth-century England.
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Jurisdictional Note
The term informator is a civil and common law Latin form with no specific jurisdictional limitation — it appears wherever Law Latin was used in legal proceedings. Its practical relevance is concentrated in English legal history and in jurisdictions that inherited English common law procedure. American sources rarely use informator; U.S. materials will use informer or, in modern criminal procedure contexts, informant.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia: Sixth Amendment — Right to Be Informed of Charges (criminal_185) — relevant for understanding the modern procedural framework within which accusations (historically carried by the informator) now operate under constitutional constraints.
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