patient

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

• adjective Bearing or enduring pain, difficulty, provocation, or annoyance with calmness.
• adjective Marked by or exhibiting calm endurance of pain, difficulty, provocation, or annoyance.
• adjective Tolerant; understanding.
• adjective Persevering; constant.
• adjective Capable of calmly awaiting an outcome or result; not hasty or impulsive.
• adjective Capable of bearing or enduring pain, difficulty, provocation, or annoyance.
• noun One who receives medical attention, care, or treatment.
• noun Linguistics A noun or noun phrase identifying one that is acted upon or undergoes an action.
• noun Obsolete One who suffers.

from The Century Dictionary.

• Enduring; physically able to support or endure; having such a bodily constitution as enables one to endure or to be proof against: followed by of before the thing endured: as, patient of labor or pain; patient of heat or cold.
• Having or manifesting that temper or east of mind which endures pain, trial, provocation, or the like without murmuring or fretfulness; sustaining afflictions or evils with fortitude, calmness, or submission; full of composure or equanimity; submissive; unrepining: as, a patient person, or a person of patient temper; patient under afflictions.
• Waiting or expecting with calmness or without discontent; not hasty; not over-eager or impetuous.
• Persevering; constant in pursuit or exertion; calmly diligent.
• Capable of bearing; susceptible.
• Synonyms Uncomplaining, unrepining, long-suffering, brave.
• Assiduous, indefatigable.
• noun A person or thing that receives impressions from external agents; one who or that which is passively affected: opposed to agent.
• noun A sufferer.
• noun Specifically A sufferer under bodily indisposition undergoing medical treatment: commonly used as a correlative to physician or nurse.
• noun Agent and patient. See agent.
• Receiving impressions; being the subject of external agents; passive.
• Reflexively, to compose (one's self); be patient.

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

• noun One who, or that which, is passively affected; a passive recipient.
• noun A person under medical or surgical treatment; -- correlative to physician or nurse.
• noun a patient who receives lodging and food, as treatment, in a hospital or an infirmary.
• noun one who receives advice and medicine, or treatment, from an infirmary.
• adjective Having the quality of enduring; physically able to suffer or bear.
• adjective Undergoing pains, trials, or the like, without murmuring or fretfulness; bearing up with equanimity against trouble; long-suffering.
• adjective Constant in pursuit or exertion; persevering; calmly diligent.
• adjective Expectant with calmness, or without discontent; not hasty; not overeager; composed.
• adjective Forbearing; long-suffering.
• transitive verb obsolete To compose, to calm.

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

• adjective content to wait if necessary; not losing one's temper while waiting; not bothered with having to wait; not unwilling to wait
• noun A person or animal who receives treatment from a doctor or other medically educated person.
• noun linguistics, grammar The noun or noun phrase that is semantically on the receiving end of a verb's action.

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

• noun a person who requires medical care
• adjective enduring trying circumstances with even temper or characterized by such endurance
• noun the semantic role of an entity that is not the agent but is directly involved in or affected by the happening denoted by the verb in the clause