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I am working on a software application in which users have facts about themselves which they must disclose to their employer or to a regulatory body. We are pinning down terminology to use for the various aspects of the disclosure process.

In general, we have the concept of a "party" which identifies a unique entity -- possibly an individual, a firm, a regulatory body, etc. We are using "disclosing party" to refer to the user who discloses the fact, and "disclosure" to refer to the act of disclosing.

We need a good term to use for the party to which the facts are being disclosed.

I've consulted a variety of common English-language dictionaries (M-W, New OAD, American Heritage, Random House) and thesauruses (Roget's, Collins, Oxford), and so far I have the following under consideration (with reasons I'm not particularly happy with them in parentheses):

  • Disclosee (not a real word)
  • Recipient or Receiving Party (too general)
  • Notified Party (implies past tense; the disclosure may not yet have occurred)
  • Informed Party (also implies past tense; also potentially ambiguous meaning)

Example sentence (just following the rules!):

"The _____ must approve or reject the disclosure."

Is there a word for this? I would accept a standalone noun, or an adjective to pair with "party."

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  • Questions which lack results of research are out of scope. Requests to help name something (such as a party to a legal document) are out of scope. Word or phrase requests are out of scope, unless they are expert-level, particularly interesting, unique, and thought-provoking, and show effort and research. For an introduction to the site, take the Tour. For help writing a good question, see How to Ask. You might want to look at the Law site intro also. They might have better advice about how to name parties to a legal document.
    – MetaEd
    Commented Jul 26, 2016 at 20:34
  • Legal documents often use the method of first defining, then using. So if you said, "...the party to whom the disclosure is made, hereinafter referred to as the recipient" it wouldn't matter that outside of your document the term might be "too general".
    – Jim
    Commented Jul 27, 2016 at 2:56
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    @MετάEd thanks. Does my list of items on the table so far, with parenthetical explanations for why they're less than ideal, not count as "results of research"? I spent quite a bit of time perusing synonyms of words close to what I want and polling subject experts to come up with those. Does "naming something" include just trying to come up with the most appropriate English word or phrase for a thing? If it does, why is "single-word-requests" a tag here?. I'm not dealing with parties to a legal document. They're participants in a workflow.
    – JakeRobb
    Commented Jul 27, 2016 at 17:22
  • @Jim the output of this process may or may not conclude with the generation of a populated form which would be submitted to a government entity (arguably a "legal document"), but putting the definition there would put it after nearly all of the usages we care about.
    – JakeRobb
    Commented Jul 27, 2016 at 17:24
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    The bulleted list is a summary of what I found. I've edited the question to include the resources I consulted. Expert-level, interesting, and thought-provoking all seem quite subjective -- are these terms clarified somewhere? I searched this site before asking and came up empty; doesn't that make it unique?
    – JakeRobb
    Commented Jul 27, 2016 at 17:38

1 Answer 1

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disclosee is actually a word that is used, but it doesn't show up in every dictionary. Still, it has been used many times.

A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage

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Garner's Dictionary of Legal Usage

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The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style

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  • Thanks! I checked several dictionaries, but none of those. :)
    – JakeRobb
    Commented Jul 27, 2016 at 17:23
  • @JakeRobb ~ no problem, the thing about these types of words is that you can create your own words just by adding suffixes like -ee or -phile, and dictionaries won't usually add them unless they become widely used
    – user180089
    Commented Jul 27, 2016 at 17:24
  • Makes sense. I never thought to search Google Books; I'm guessing that's standard practice here. Now I know!
    – JakeRobb
    Commented Jul 27, 2016 at 17:27
  • @JakeRobb ~ well not everyone does it. btw I'd appreciate it if you accepted this answer by clicking the checkmark above.
    – user180089
    Commented Jul 27, 2016 at 17:31
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    I plan to, assuming another more appealing answer doesn't show up soon. :)
    – JakeRobb
    Commented Jul 27, 2016 at 17:42

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