correspondent

Everyday

1. A reporter who sends news to a newspaper, radio or TV station from a particular place or about a particular subject, such as a war correspondent or a sports correspondent. tree →
2. A person who writes letters to someone else regularly; two people who write to each other are correspondents. tree →
3. (formal) A person or firm that deals with another, especially a bank that does business for another bank in a different country. tree →

In the lessons

In everyday life and on the news a correspondent is the person reporting «live from» somewhere: «our correspondent in Paris». In stories it tells the reader someone is far away and sending information back. Phrases: «foreign correspondent», «war correspondent», «political correspondent», «a regular correspondent», «pen-pal correspondent». In school it appears in media studies and letter-writing lessons.

Examples

• The news correspondent stood in the rain and told us about the flood. tree →
• Our school has a correspondent who writes for the local paper about sports day. tree →
• My nan and her old school friend have been correspondents for a very long time. tree →
• The BBC sent a correspondent to report on the bushfires. tree →
• A sports correspondent wrote about the big match on the back page. tree →
• The two pen pals were faithful correspondents and wrote every month. tree →
• The foreign correspondent spoke three languages. tree →
• (formal) The bank used a correspondent in another country to send the money. tree →

Note

Countable: one correspondent, two correspondents. Spelled with -ent, not -ant. Do not mix up with «corresponding» (matching) or «correspondence» (letters, or a match between things). In maths «corresponding angles» uses a related word but has nothing to do with reporters. It starts with a consonant sound, so «a correspondent».