tourist
Americannoun
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a person who travels for pleasure, usually sightseeing and staying in hotels
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( as modifier )
tourist attractions
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a person on an excursion or sightseeing tour
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a person travelling abroad as a member of a sports team that is playing a series of usually international matches
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Also called: tourist class. the lowest class of accommodation on a passenger ship
adjective
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of tourist
Explanation
Someone who visits a city, town, or historic site just for the pleasure of exploring it can be described as a tourist. When you travel for fun, you're a tourist. Some local inhabitants of vacation destinations might have a negative image of obnoxious, camera-toting tourists, but really they're just travelers who are curious about different parts of the world. Beaches, amusement parks, castles, and big cities are all places you're likely to run into tourists. The term "tourist trap," or a place that exists only to take tourists' money, was first used in 1939 by the novelist Graham Greene.
Vocabulary lists containing tourist
This Week in Words: Current Events Vocab for August 21–August 27, 2021
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Travel
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This Week in Words: Current Events Vocab for February 5–February 11, 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.
Muir admitted that, on its face, that probably looks like “an insane call,” in his Macro Tourist Substack post published Wednesday.
From MarketWatch • Jun. 17, 2026
Tourist Kele Shi, a tech worker living in Washington who is from Shenzhen, China, decided to stop by its first U.S. location after seeing videos on YouTube and the Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu.
From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 24, 2026
Kevin Muir, a former institutional trader and now author of the Macro Tourist blog, expressed his view on the metal in Maggie Lake’s “Talking Markets” podcast.
From MarketWatch • Jan. 22, 2026
This spectacularly important museum, inexplicably omitted from the Tourist Office map, is only a short walk from the famed Jewish quarter.
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 26, 2025
Tourist season was over, and there were no boats on the river, and the wilderness seemed to withdraw into a great permanent stillness.
From "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien
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.
