passenger
[pas-uh n-jer]
- 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.
- a wayfarer; traveler.
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Origin of passenger
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for passenger
Contemporary Examples
A click sends a user to a statement, a list of passenger nationalities, emergency call-center numbers, and other information.
Alexander and Adorno were doing what they could to save the officer on the passenger side, Liu.
Brinsley stepped up to the passenger side of the patrol car, raised a silver Taurus semi-automatic pistol and began firing.
An Uber driver assaulted a passenger and it turned out he had a felony conviction, despite passing the background check.
An Uber driver went on an anti-gay, ant-American rant before physically assaulting his passenger.
Historical Examples
Half fearfully I look at my passenger, but he is a black man.
Ballads of a BohemianRobert W. Service
I was put on board as a passenger, and we sailed about a week after the ship got in from London.
Ned MyersJames Fenimore Cooper
We had a passenger, who passed for some revolutionary man, who also landed secretly.
Ned MyersJames Fenimore Cooper
She was the only passenger in the diligence, and the door was locked.
Hetty's Strange HistoryAnonymous
As he walked up the deck, he saw there was one passenger who had been earlier than himself.
A Woman IntervenesRobert Barr
passenger
- a person travelling in a car, train, boat, etc, not driven by him
- (as modifier)a passenger seat
- mainly British a member of a group or team who is a burden on the others through not participating fully in the work
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Word Origin
C14: from Old French passager passing, from passage 1
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for passenger
n.
early 14c., passager "passer-by," from Old French passagier "traveler, passer-by" (Modern French passager), noun use of passagier (adj.) "passing, fleeting, traveling," from passage (see passage).
And in this I resemble the Lappwing, who fearing hir young ones to be destroyed by passengers, flyeth with a false cry farre from their nestes, making those that looke for them seeke where they are not .... [John Lyly, "Euphues and His England," 1580]
The -n- was added early 15c. (cf. messenger, harbinger, scavenger, porringer). Meaning "one traveling in a vehicle or vessel" first attested 1510s. Passenger-pigeon of North America so called from 1802; extinct since 1914.
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper