Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Someone who takes part in a conversation, often formally or officially.
  • noun The performer in a minstrel show who is placed midway between the end men and engages in banter with them.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who speaks in a dialogue or takes part in a conversation.
  • noun In Scots law, a judgment or sentence pronounced in the course of a suit, but which does not finally determine the cause.
  • noun In negro minstrelsy, the middleman. See middleman, 4.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who takes part in dialogue or conversation; a talker, interpreter, or questioner.
  • noun (Law) An interlocutory judgment or sentence.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Scotland, law A decree of a court.
  • noun A person who takes part in dialogue or conversation.
  • noun A man in the middle of the line in a minstrel show who questions the end men and acts as leader.
  • noun law An interlocutory judgement or sentence.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the performer in the middle of a minstrel line who engages the others in talk
  • noun a person who takes part in a conversation

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French interlocutoire, from Latin interlocūtōrium.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

A noun-form of Latin interloquor ("speak between, issue an interlocutory decree"), from inter- + loquor ("speak").

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Examples

  • He hisses at him for being a "banker" (sounds like wanker, get it?) and pulls him up for using the term interlocutor twice (this from the man who brought you indefatigability).

    Archive 2009-01-01 Johnny Guitar 2009

  • He hisses at him for being a "banker" (sounds like wanker, get it?) and pulls him up for using the term interlocutor twice (this from the man who brought you indefatigability).

    Shaddap you face Johnny Guitar 2009

  • Two such massive egotists on stage without a disciplinary interlocutor is always a risk: Sinclair begins by claiming that he may have invented Home as a character, or at least some of his ‘psychogeographical’ writings.

    March « 2010 « Squares of Wheat 2010

  • Two such massive egotists on stage without a disciplinary interlocutor is always a risk: Sinclair begins by claiming that he may have invented Home as a character, or at least some of his ‘psychogeographical’ writings.

    No more heroes « Squares of Wheat 2010

  • Two such massive egotists on stage without a disciplinary interlocutor is always a risk: Sinclair begins by claiming that he may have invented Home as a character, or at least some of his ‘psychogeographical’ writings.

    No more heroes « Squares of Wheat 2010

  • Two such massive egotists on stage without a disciplinary interlocutor is always a risk: Sinclair begins by claiming that he may have invented Home as a character, or at least some of his ‘psychogeographical’ writings.

    March « 2010 « Squares of Wheat 2010

  • The meme our illustrious interlocutor is faultily remembering is “information wants to be free.”

    Bits Debate: Responding to Readers on Filtering - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com 2008

  • Nowadays if you meet a German of a certain age, their families always voted Social Democrat before 1933, they themselves always served on the Western Front (if their interlocutor is Russian or Polish) or the Eastern Front (if you are British or American) and they always surrendered as soon as they could and they never, ever knew about the Holocaust.

    German Eyes are Not Smiling 2007

  • Nowadays if you meet a German of a certain age, their families always voted Social Democrat before 1933, they themselves always served on the Western Front (if their interlocutor is Russian or Polish) or the Eastern Front (if you are British or American) and they always surrendered as soon as they could and they never, ever knew about the Holocaust.

    Archive 2007-07-29 2007

  • Instead, the interlocutor is saying that the author was himself anti-Catholic, and therefore all of his writings are to be avoided.

    Owning Authors Richard Nokes 2006

Comments

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  • "At the risk of her own was the telling rejoinder of his interlocutor none the less effective for the moderate and measured tone in which it was delivered."

    Joyce, Ulysses, 14

    January 22, 2007

  • "The identity of the official whose alleged responsibility for this hypothetical oversight has been the subject of recent discussion is not shrouded in quite such impenetrable obscurity as certain previous disclosures may have led you to assume, but, not to put too fine a point on it, the individual in question is, it may surprise you to learn, one whom your present interlocutor is in the habit of defining by means of the perpendicular pronoun." - Sir Humphrey Appleby (Yes, Prime Minister)

    October 21, 2007

  • "I don't need a timekeeper, I don't need an interlocutor

    And baby, you'll look a little cuter, day by day."

    -Pavement

    April 7, 2009