visitant

Etymology

From French visitant, present participle of visiter.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈvɪzɪtənt/

Noun

visitant (plural visitants)

1. One who visits; a guest; a visitor.
   • 1612-13, John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi Act I, Scene III,

     Ambition, madam, is a great man's madness, / That is not kept in chains and close-pent rooms, / But in fair lightsome lodgings, and is girt / With the wild noise of prattling visitants, / Which makes it lunatic beyond all cure.

   • 1678, Robert South, "Prevention of Sin an unvaluable Mercy: or A sermon preached upon that subject on 1 Sam. XXV.32, 33," in Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions, Oxford University Press, 1842, Vol. 2, p. 9,

     One visit is enough to begin an acquaintance; and this point is gained by it, that when the visitant comes again, he is no more a stranger.

   • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Dublin: John Smith, Volume I, Book 2, Chapter 9, p. 92,

     The Room was soon full of Servants, some of whom, with the Lady visitant, were employed in Care of the Wife […]

   • 1818, John Keats, Endymion, Book 1, 906-909,

     Pleasure is oft a visitant; but pain

     Clings cruelly to us, like the gnawing sloth

     On the deer’s tender haunches: late, and loth,

     ’Tis scar’d away by slow returning pleasure.

   • 1949, Sinclair Lewis, The God-Seeker, New York: Popular Library, Chapter 2, p. 13,

     Mrs. Treadhill, stringy but pleasant, met the visitants in the kitchen, and whined, "He’s failing fast. […] "

2. A spectre or ghost.
   • 1905, Lafcadio Hearn, "The Mirror Maiden" in The Romance of the Milky Way and Other Studies & Stories, Houghton Mifflin, p. 134,

     Matsumura felt almost sure that his ghostly visitant had been none other than the Soul of the Mirror.

   • 1922, D. H. Lawrence, Aaron's Rod, New York: Thomas Seltzer, Chapter XIX, p. 310,

     In the afternoon, Aaron felt the cypresses rising dark about him, like so many high visitants from an old, lost, lost subtle world, where men had the wonder of demons about them, the aura of demons, such as still clings to the cypresses, in Tuscany,

3. A migratory bird that makes a temporary stop somewhere.
   • 1964, Alden Holmes Miller and Robert Cyril Stebbins, The Lives of Desert Animals in Joshua Tree National Monument, University of California Press, Chapter 5, p. 49,

     Reëstablishment of such facilities would probably soon draw occasional visitants in special need of rest in their desert flights.

Adjective

visitant (comparative more visitant, superlative most visitant)

1. Visiting.
   • 1677, Thomas d’Urfey, Madam Fickle, or, The Witty False One, London: James Magnes & Richard Bentley, Act III, Scene 2, p. 33,

     Now the plots unravell’d: I begin to have a knowledge of the visitant Kinsman that us’d to molest us.

   • 1965, Muriel Spark, The Mandelbaum Gate, London: Macmillan, Part Two, Chapter 6,

     Sermons were not encouraged, as the demand on the use of the famous altar by visitant priests and their pilgrims was heavy on Sunday mornings, and even a short sermon held up the next Mass on the list.

Anagrams

• nativist

Verb

visitant

1. present participle of visitar

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /vi.zi.tɑ̃/

Verb

visitant

1. present participle of visiter

Verb

vīsitant

1. third-person plural present active indicative of vīsitō