passenger
Americannoun
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a person who is traveling in an automobile, bus, train, airplane, or other conveyance, especially one who is not the driver, pilot, or the like.
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a wayfarer; traveler.
noun
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a person travelling in a car, train, boat, etc, not driven by him
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( as modifier )
a passenger seat
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a member of a group or team who is a burden on the others through not participating fully in the work
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of passenger
1300–50; Middle English passager < Middle French, noun use of passag ( i ) er (adj.) passing, temporary; see passage 1, -ier 2; for -n- cf. messenger, harbinger, scavenger, popinjay
Explanation
A passenger is a person who rides in a vehicle. If you grab a ride home from school with your best friend, you are a passenger in her car. Everyone riding in a train, plane, bus, or any other vehicle is a passenger — except the driver, pilot, or crew. A passenger's only job is to ride along. In the fourteenth century, a passenger was simply a "passer-by," from the Old French passagier, "passing, fleeting, or traveling." The first instance of the modern use was recorded in the early 1500s.
Vocabulary lists containing passenger
Greetings, World Traveler! — List 1
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"Return to Titanic" and "Talking with Robert Ballard"
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This Week in Words: Current Events Vocab for September 10–September 16, 2022
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Passenger Peter Knapp said others on his train saw one ahead of them before the crash.
From BBC • Jun. 19, 2026
There’s one enjoyably oddball visual when Passenger Man disrupts a cozy projector-and-canopy movie night in the forest and suddenly the faces of Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn are on trees everywhere as mayhem ensues.
From Los Angeles Times • May 22, 2026
Retail sales of passenger cars in April fell 21.5% from a year earlier to 1.38 million units, the China Passenger Car Association data showed.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 21, 2026
The electric-vehicle maker in April saw 79,478 deliveries of Model 3 and Model Y cars built at its Shanghai plant, according to new data from the China Passenger Car Association.
From MarketWatch • May 7, 2026
Passenger pigeons’ diet centered on mast, the collective name for acorns, beechnuts, hazelnuts, chestnuts, and the like; they also really liked maize.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
