visitor

[viz-i-ter] /ˈvɪz ɪ tər/

noun

a person who visits, as for reasons of friendship, business, duty, travel, or the like.

Origin

1400-50; late Middle English visitour < Anglo-French; Old French visiteor < Late Latin vīsitātor, equivalent to Latin vīsitā(re) to visit + -tor -tor

Related forms

previsitor, noun

Synonyms

Visitor, caller, guest, visitant are terms for a person who comes to spend time with or stay with others, or in a place. A visitor often stays some time, for social pleasure, for business, sightseeing, etc.: a visitor at our neighbor's house. A caller comes for a brief (usually) formal visit: The caller merely left her card. A guest is anyone receiving hospitality, and the word has been extended to include anyone who pays for meals and lodging: a welcome guest; a hotel guest. Visitant applies especially to a migratory bird or to a supernatural being: a warbler as a visitant.

Examples from the web for visitor

Every visitor feels impelled to linger, and is loath to go.
But the sociologists and the casual visitor have not disappeared.
He is the depressed visitor of the sick, who must needs beware, and be provided with preservatives.
No visitor succeeds in leaving the building to-day without seeing a great shield which hangs on the wall of the dining hall.
The doctor put on his coat and pointed his visitor to the jointed chair in which patients were sometimes examined.
The butler made no bones about admitting this new visitor.
Whether seasonal visitor or resident hasn't been conclusively established they have been spotted here in all four seasons.
But the newfound visitor is the brightest asteroid, and consequently among the largest, to draw so near in the past year.
The visitor's chairs in the waiting rooms, the floors, even the walls.
The pine-and-juniper campground is near the national monument's visitor center.

British Dictionary definitions for visitor

visitor

/ˈvɪzɪtə/

noun

a person who pays a visit; caller, guest, tourist, etc

another name for visitant (sense 4)

Word Origin and History for visitor

early 15c., from visit + -or. Sports sense is from 1900.

Slang definitions & phrases for visitor

visit from Flo

noun

The menstrual period (1980+)