narc
noun · verb
Simple meaning
A police officer or federal agent assigned to or engaging in illegal narcotics control.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
nahrkIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈnɑɹk
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
informalcolloquialdrugs
A police officer or federal agent assigned to or engaging in illegal narcotics control.
colloquialinformal
A narcissist.
informalcolloquial
A police spy or informer.
verb
underwater divingslang
To suffer from impaired judgment due to nitrogen narcosis (for example, while scuba diving).
informalcolloquial
To serve or behave as a spy or informer; to tattle.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: (informal, colloquial, drugs) A police officer or federal agent assigned to or engaging in illegal narcotics control.
Used this way, narc is a reasonably familiar word with a faintly unfavourable edge. It turns up most in everyday conversation and social media or informal writing contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Slightly negative
- Formality
- Casual
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Critical or judgemental
- Usage feel
- Casual and conversational
Where it naturally appears
- Everyday conversation
- Social media/informal writing
Nearby words
- nark , much rarer in everyday speech
- narcotics agent , much rarer in everyday speech
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: police officer or federal agent assigned to
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.