Dictionary definition(s) for: agent

• n., One who is authorized to act for or in place of another.
  [ Archives - Black's Law Dictionary ]
  Black's Law Dictionary. 8th ed. Edited by Bryan A.Garner and Henry Campbell Black. St. Paul, MN : Thomson/West, 2004.
• n., An active communicating entity that can acquire a role; that is, an abstract representation of a function, service, or identity.
  [ Sciences - A Dictionary of Geography ]
  A Dictionary of Geography. Susan Mayhew. Oxford University Press, 2004. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. University of British Columbia. 4 August 2006 http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t15.e70
• n., An agent is a business representative who handles contractual arrangements between the principal and third persons.
  [ Government - A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage ]
  A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage. 2nd ed. Edited by Bryan A.Garner. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
• n., An autonomous system that receives information from its environment, processes it, and performs actions on that environment. Agents may have different degrees of intelligence or rationality, and may be implemented in software, hardware, or both.
  [ Computer and Information Sciences - A Dictionary of Computing ]
  A Dictionary of Computing. Oxford University Press, 2004. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. University of British Columbia. 4 August 2006 http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t11.e100
• n., An individual or firm acting as a middleman between librarian and publisher in the acquistion of material.
  [ Computer and Information Sciences - Harrod’s Librarians’ Glossary and Reference Book ]
  Harrod’s Librarians’ Glossary and Reference Book. 9th ed. Edited by Raymond John Prytherch. Brookfield, Vt.: Gower, 2000.
• n., An intermediary who performs various matters of business connected with the theatre.
  [ Arts - The New Penguin Dictionary of the Theatre ]
  The New Penguin Dictionary of the Theatre. Rev. ed. Edited by Jonathan Law, David Pickering, and Richard Helfer. London: Penguin, 2001.
• n., In the client-server model, the part of the system that performs information preparation and exchange on behalf of a client or server. Especially in the phrase "intelligent agent" it implies some kind of automatic process which can communicate with other agents to perform some collective task on behalf of one or more humans.
  [ Computer and Information Sciences - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (FOLDOC) ]
  FOLDOC: Free Online Dictionary of Computing. http://foldoc.org/.
• n., People authorized to represent or act on behalf of someone else, particularly in business transactions.
  [ Arts - Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) ]
  J. Paul Getty Trust. Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT). Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Trust, 2005. http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_reseach/vocabularies/aat/
• n., Person or company licenced by the state to represent clients and negotiate their contracts for a standard agent's fee.
  [ Arts - Filmmaker’s Dictionary ]
  Filmmaker's Dictionary. 2nd ed. Edited by Ralph S. Singleton and James A. Conrad. Hollywood, CA: Lone Eagle, 2000.