Interpretant is a term used by Charles Peirce to denote one of the three most important parts of a sign or semiosis.
According to him, the sign is irreducibly triadic, its components are a sign (or sign vehicle), object, and interpreter.
The interpretant should not be confused with the interpreter. The interpretant is what the sign as such ends in, while the interpreter is a personal agent that participates in and exercises control over the process of interpretation.
The interpretant is not every result produced by the sign. Something that functions as a sign could produce effects that are not related to it as a sign; for example, a fire showing the presence of a plane crash survivors can easily become a forest fire. And the forest fire will then be an accidental result and so there will be no interpretant of the sign calling for help (or showing the location of the survivors).
