Did you know?
Raconteur Has Old French Roots
If you’re a sage of sagas, a bard of ballads, or a pro in prose, you may have lost count of the accounts you’ve recounted. Some might call you a recounter, but as a master of narrative form you may find that recounter lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. Sure, it has a cool story—it traces back to the Latin verb computere, meaning “to count”—but so do many words: compute and computer, count and account, and neither last nor least, raconteur, a singsong title better fit for a whimsical storyteller. English speakers borrowed raconteur from French in the early 19th century.
Examples of raconteur in a Sentence
Jed Gottlieb,
Boston Herald,
25 May 2026
O’Brien, 86, is a gleeful raconteur who has worked as a director in the theater since the 1960s, picking up four Tony Awards along the way, including for Hairspray, and has enough anecdotes to fill at least two memoirs.
—
Jackson McHenry,
Vulture,
6 Apr. 2026
Cornfield draws out those stories like a raconteur teasing information between sips of bourbon.
—
Madison Bloom,
Pitchfork,
31 Mar. 2026
Enrigue is an erudite, charismatic raconteur—the sort who will tell you the most abject story with a wink—and his novel distills a byzantine swirl of historical events through the lives of a handful of very colorful characters.
—
Carolina A. Miranda,
The Atlantic,
5 Mar. 2026
See All Example Sentences for raconteur
Cite this Entry
“Raconteur.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/raconteur. Accessed 25 Jun. 2026.
Copy Citation
