agent

Definition

One who exerts power, or has the power to act.

Etymology

From Latin agēns, present active participle of agere (“to drive, lead, conduct, manage, perform, do”).

Example Sentences

• "Seeing we are so wonderfully endowed with priceless gifts by our Heavenly Father, will he not require usury at our hands? He will. But he has made us agents to ourselves, which makes us responsible for the way in which we use the talents he has given us, for the manner we expend the gold and silver, the wheat and fine flour, the cattle upon a thousand hills, and the wine and oil, for they all belong to Him"
• "He worked as an agent for the government."
• "I see in him [Moby Dick] outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him."

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