Confident vs. confidential vs. confidant

Confidant

A close person with whom you share the most secret matters, the kind that cannot be shared with anyone else.

It is a noun and refers to a person. Sometimes, people use ‘confidante’ as an alternative word to refer to females.

• The actor is a confidante of the director, that’s why he got the part.
• You are my close confidante and hope that you will never turn me down.

Confident

An adjective to describe a person who is sure of oneself. The word originated in the 16^th century from the French and Italian confidente and the Latin confident meaning “having full trust”.

Examples –

• He sounds so confident that I want to give this job to him.
• Be confident when you shake hands with the interviewer.
• I am confident about getting this job.
• You should not be so over-confident about your speaking skills.

Confidential

Confidential is something that has to be kept a secret. It can be information, documents and so on. Confidential is an adjective. Some synonyms are personal, private or secret.

Examples –

• The confidential whisper of her tone indicated it was something very intense.
• These files are confidential and cannot be seen by anyone outside of the firm.
• Let us bring some confidentiality in our tone while talking about this matter.
• Can I trust you with this confidential information?

As we see, the words are related in some way but are different and used in different contexts.

Here are some examples with these words to make the difference clearer –

• I think you are my close confidant and I can share this confidential information with you.
• I can’t believe it was so easy to win her confidence and get these confidential documents from her!