Thesaurus results for OPERATIVES

operatives

noun

plural of operative

as in spies

a person who tries secretly to obtain information for one country in the territory of another usually unfriendly country CIA operatives take terrible risks to find out the secrets of foreign countries

Synonyms & Similar Words

Relevance

as in detectives

a person not on the police force who investigates criminal or illicit activity or searches for missing persons set in the 1930s, the novel is about a washed-out operative working for a third-rate detective agency

Synonyms & Similar Words

Examples Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for operatives

Noun

Police identified teenage boys through video surveillance Mount Prospect police detectives were able to identify some of the teenage suspects through video surveillance footage of the incident at the 7-Eleven, the department said.

Jonathan Limehouse, USA TODAY, 4 Jan. 2025
Several hours later, detectives were told the man had died.

Andrea Klick, Kansas City Star, 3 Jan. 2025

Definition of detectives

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.