visitor

Meaning

Noun

• Someone who visits someone else; someone staying as a guest.
• Someone who pays a visit to a specific place or event; a sightseer or tourist.
• Someone, or a team, that is playing away from home.
• A person authorized to visit an institution to see that it is being managed properly.
• An extraterrestrial being on Earth for any reason.
• An object which lands or passes by Earth or its orbit.
• A head or overseer of an institution such as a college (in which case, equivalent to the university's chancellor) or cathedral or hospital, who resolves disputes, gives ceremonial speeches, etc.
• The object in the visitor pattern that performs an operation on the elements of a structure one by one.

Origin

• Partly from Middle English visiter, visitere, equivalent to visit + -er; and partly from Middle English visitour, from Anglo-Norman visitour, from Old French visetëor.