Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A visitor; a guest.
  • noun A supernatural being; a ghost or specter.
  • noun A migratory bird that stops in a particular place for a limited period of time.
  • adjective Visiting.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Acting the part of a visitor; paying visits; visiting.
  • noun One who visits; one who goes or comes to see another; one who is a guest in the house of a friend; a visitor.
  • noun In ornithology, a migratory bird which comes to and stays in a place or region during a part of the year: opposed to resident: as, the snowy owl is a winter visitant from the north in the United States. Rare or irregular visitants are termed stragglers. See straggler, 2.
  • noun [capitalized] A member of a Roman Catholic order of nuns, founded at Annecy in Savoy by Francis de Sales and Mme. de Chantal in 1610.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Visiting.
  • noun One who visits; a guest; a visitor.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A visitor or guest.
  • noun A spectre or ghost.
  • noun A migratory bird that makes a temporary stop somewhere.
  • adjective Visiting.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun someone who visits

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin visitāns, visitant-, present participle of visitāre, to go to see; see visit.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French visitant, present participle of visiter.

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Examples

  • What visitant from the gloom of the deep was I to behold?

    Chapter 14 2010

  • Possessed of more than a cursory knowledge of astronomy, he took a sick man's pleasure in speculating as to the dwellers on the unseen worlds of those incredibly remote suns, to haunt whose houses of light life came forth, a shy visitant from the rayless crypts of matter.

    The Red One 1918

  • What visitant from the gloom of the deep was I to behold?

    Chapter 14 1904

  • For two hours after our arrival, Mr.C. displayed a good deal of his brilliant conversation, when he was listened to with surprise and delight by the whole circle; but at this time, unluckily, Lady -- was announced, when Mrs. Hannah, from politeness, devoted herself to her titled visitant, while the little folks retired to

    Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey Joseph Cottle 1811

  • For two hours after our arrival, Mr.C. displayed a good deal of his brilliant conversation, when he was listened to with surprise and delight by the whole circle; but at this time, unluckily, Lady ” was announced, when Mrs. Hannah, from politeness, devoted herself to her titled visitant, while the little folks retired to a snug window with one or two of the Misses More, and there had their own agreeable converse.

    Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey Cottle, Joseph 1847

  • I was wakened, after having slept uneasily for some hours, by some person shaking me rudely by the shoulder; a small lamp burned in my room, and by its light, to my horror and amazement, I discovered that my visitant was the self-same blind old lady who had so terrified me a few weeks before.

    The Purcell Papers 2003

  • I was wakened, after having slept uneasily for some hours, by some person shaking me rudely by the shoulder; a small lamp burned in my room, and by its light, to my horror and amazement, I discovered that my visitant was the self-same blind old lady who had so terrified me a few weeks before.

    The Purcell Papers, Volume III 1880

  • I was wakened, after having slept uneasily for some hours, by some person shaking me rudely by the shoulder; a small lamp burned in my room, and by its light, to my horror and amazement, I discovered that my visitant was the self-same blind old lady who had so terrified me a few weeks before.

    The Purcell Papers — Volume 3 Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu 1843

  • It struck me as an odd thing, that even then, considering how prone to superstition persons in his rank of life usually are, he did not seem to suspect any thing supernatural in the occurrence; and, on the contrary, was thoroughly persuaded that his visitant was a living person, who had got into the house by some hidden entrance.

    J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu 1843

  • She might seem, indeed, like himself, rather a "visitant" than an inhabitant of this planet, and their courtship not unlike one of his own stories of half immaterial lovers who go hand in hand, with sentiments for sentences and great heedlessness of mortal matters, to an idyllic union of hearts.

    Nathaniel Hawthorne George Edward Woodberry 1892

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