An agent provocateur is a person who commits or who acts to entice another person to commit an illegal or rash act or falsely implicate them in partaking in an illegal act, so as to ruin the reputation or entice legal action against the target or a group they belong to or are perceived to belong to.

What does provocateur mean?

provocateur • \proh-vah-kuh-TER\ • noun. : one who incites or stimulates another to action.

How do you use agent provocateur in a sentence?

Examples of agent provocateur. He is a kind of agent provocateur and a journalist, and he likes to stereotype, but actually he's a very fine philosopher who reflects a lot on music. At the subsequent rendezvous, the defendant was caught with the tablets on him, but again the defence claimed "agent provocateur".