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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
Justin Kaufmann, Axios, 1 Aug. 2024
Artists and local raconteurs will also share surprising and hysterical stories.
—Detroit Free Press Staff, Detroit Free Press, 29 July 2024
Both the show and its raconteurs operate with infinite mischief—for example, a screen warns us at the start of the show that someone onstage might die.
—Helen Shaw, The New Yorker, 25 July 2024
At the center of it, as resident raconteur, impresario and all-around music maven, was Mr. Lee, a nonstop talker who knew where each of the 100,000-odd titles in his shop could be found.
—Matt Schudel, Washington Post, 9 July 2024
See all Example Sentences for raconteur 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'raconteur.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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“Raconteur.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/raconteur. Accessed 22 Aug. 2024.
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