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interlocutor

formal A person who takes part in a dialogue or conversation.

(from here)

If Lexico says some word is "formal", then it means it's formal AF (it flags them as such much rarer compared to, say, the Longman dictionary). I don't want to pose as some aristocrat without a reason. How can I express the same idea using everyday language? Don't suggest 'speaker', it doesn't fit (it's only applied to spoken speech, as I understand it, I need a broader term).

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  • The question Shorter way to say “conversational partner” was asked on ELU several years ago. The short answer is English doesn't actually have any "everyday" words with the requested sense. If you don't like interlocutor you might consider conversant, conversationalist, discussant or similar, but none of those are in common use either. In normal conversational English we simply avoid constructions that would require such a word (because we know we haven't got one! :)
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Mar 5, 2020 at 13:02

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"The other party" is probably still formal, but nowhere near as formal as "interlocutor".

"The other person" even less so.

If you are talking about someone on a telephone call, you might want to refer to the two parties as "the caller" or some other title that denotes who you were speaking to.

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