visitor

Noun

visitor (plural visitors)

1. Someone who visits someone else; someone staying as a guest.
   • He ventured to raise his eyes again, and found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm.1843 December 19, Charles Dickens, “Stave I. Marley’s Ghost.”, in A Christmas Carol. […], London: Chapman & Hall, […], →OCLC, page 35
   • "'Tis some visiter," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door— / Only this, and nothing more."1845 February, — Quarles [pseudonym; Edgar Allan Poe], “The Raven”, in The American Review, volume I, number II, New York, N.Y.; London: Wiley & Putnam, […], →OCLC, page 143
2. Someone who pays a visit to a specific place or event; a sightseer or tourist.
   • Warwick observed, as they passed through the respectable quarter, that few people who met the girl greeted her, and that some others whom she passed at gates or doorways gave her no sign of recognition; from which he inferred that she was possibly a visitor in the town and not well acquainted.1900, Charles W[addell] Chesnutt, chapter I, in The House Behind the Cedars, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company […], →OCLC
   • Belgrade knew how to show visitors a good time, thanks to its fashionable, somewhat raucous nightclub and bar scene.2023 March 15, David Farley, “Is This the New Cocktail Capital of Europe?”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 02 Oct 2023
3. (plural-normally) Someone, or a team, that is playing away from home.
   • But, somewhat against the run of play, Craddock fired the visitors ahead, volleying a low effort beyond Simon Mignolet after Sunderland twice failed to clear attempted crosses from Stephen Hunt.2011 May 14, Peter Scrivener, “Sunderland 1-3 Wolverhampton”, in BBC Sport
4. A person authorized to visit an institution to see that it is being managed properly.
   • As to eleemoſynary corporations, by the dotation the founder and his heirs are of common right the legal viſitors, to ſee that that property is rightly employed, which would otherwiſe have deſcended to the viſitor himſelf: […]1765, William Blackstone, “Of Corporations”, in Commentaries on the Laws of England, book I (Of the Rights of Persons), Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] Clarendon Press, →OCLC, page 469
5. (specifically) An extraterrestrial being on Earth.
   • 5: Of course there is always the remote (I hope) possibility that instant panic will prompt us to send a hailstorm of nuclear warheads out upon the visitor.1979, Chris Boyce, Extraterrestrial Encounter: a Personal Perspective, Chartwell Books, page 184
   • When we ask what evidence does in fact exist of extraterrestrial sojourns on our planet, we can start with what would surely be the best evidence of all: an actual visitor, or group of visitors, visible to crowds of people and ready for photo opportunities, television interviews, handshakes, polite...2001, Donald Goldsmith, Tobias C. Owen, The Search for Life in the Universe, University Science Books, page 511
6. An object which lands or passes by Earth or its orbit.
   • Within a few months, another small meteoric mass has been added to the list of those extra-terrestrial bodies which have fallen within the limits of Tennessee. This recent visitor is a stone, weighing, when first obtained, three pounds.1869, James Merrill Safford, Geology of Tennessee, S. C. Mercer, page 520
   • This satellite, they suspect, is a visitor sent by the “superior beings” of a community of other stars within our Milky Way galaxy.1977, John Philip Cohane, Paradox: the Case for the Extraterrestrial Origin of Man, Crown Publishers, page 154
7. (UK) 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.
8. The object in the visitor pattern that performs an operation on the elements of a structure one by one.