patient

Etymology

From Middle English pacient, from Middle French patient, from Old French pacient, from Latin patiens, present participle of patior (“to suffer, endure”), from Proto-Indo-European *peh₁- (“to hate, hurt”).

adj

1. (of a person) Willing to wait if necessary; not losing one's temper while waiting.
   Be patient: your friends will arrive in a few hours.
   Asari Cultural VI: Due to our lifespan-sometimes reaching 1,000 years of age-we are patient in our decisions, and prefer long-term solutions over short-term gains. 2017, BioWare, Mass Effect: Andromeda (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →OCLC, PC, scene: Nexus
2. Constant in pursuit or exertion; persevering; calmly diligent.
   patient endeavour
   a patient wait
   patient analysis
   c. 1692, Sir Isaac Newton, letter to Dr. Richard Bentley Whatever I have done […] is due to […] patient thought.
   December 15, 2016, Hettie Judah in the New York Times, Beloved Children’s-Book Characters, in Their Own Immersive World “Her personal life and her art were very intertwined: You can’t really separate them,” explains Sophia Jansson. “She mirrored her own a reality onto a fictional reality.” And this is perhaps the nub of the Moomin’s enduring appeal: a combination of adventuresome spirit and philosophy, all of which Jansson derived from close and patient observation, of human relationships and of the natural world alike.
   In contrast, the Westminster Gazette in 1912 was much more positive about railway staff, praising the "...army of porters hustling and bustling hither and thither with barrows groaning under the weight of bags and baggage and... the ever-patient and long-suffering guards, courteously giving information and advice to the querulous passengers... to the porter the Christmas season means a continuous round of heavy labour, extremely tiring to both nerves and temper, and this fact the public too often seem either to forget or ignore." December 14 2022, David Turner, “The Edwardian Christmas getaway...”, in RAIL, number 972, page 35
3. (obsolete) Physically able to suffer or bear.
   To this outward structure was joined that strength of constitution, patient of severest toil and hardship; insomuch that for the most part of his life, in the fiercest extremity of cold, he took no other advantage of a fire, than at the greatest distance that he could, to look upon it. 1661, John Fell, “Doctor Henry Hammond”, in Christopher Wordsworth, editor, Ecclesiastical Biography, volume 5, published 1810, page 380

noun

1. A person or animal who receives treatment from a doctor or other medically educated person.
   An artificial kidney these days still means a refrigerator-sized dialysis machine. Such devices mimic[…]real kidneys[…]. But they are nothing like as efficient, and can cause bleeding, clotting and infection—not to mention inconvenience for patients, who typically need to be hooked up to one three times a week for hours at a time. 2013-06-01, “A better waterworks”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, page 5 (Technology Quarterly)
2. (linguistics, grammar) The noun or noun phrase that is semantically on the receiving end of a verb's action.
   The subject of a passive verb is usually a patient.
   The number of a first or second person participant is generally marked for both agent and patient in all aspects. 1982, Paul J. Hopper, Tense-aspect: Between Semantics & Pragmatics
   Since we have argued that the absolutive argument in Dyirbal is the grammatical subject of its clause, we must conclude that in the antipassive construction the agent replaces the patient as grammatical subject. 2004, Paul Kroeger, Analyzing Syntax: A Lexical-Functional Approach, page 292
3. One who, or that which, is passively affected; a passive recipient.
   Malice is a passion so impetuous and precipitate, that it often involves the agent and the patient. c. 1658, Dr. Henry More, Government of the Tongue
   For it seems clear that the subject of change is the changed, i.e. the patient -- on one proviso. the proviso is that there be an agent or changer. 1988, Sarah Waterlow, Sarah Broadie, Nature, Change, and Agency in Aristotle's Physics, page 159
   How does a person change from a patient to an agent in shaping and living a course of life? 1994, Larry Cochran, Joan Laub, Becoming an Agent: Patterns and Dynamics for Shaping Your Life
   According to the tradition, when an agent acts on a patient, the change is located in the patient. If the patient reacts on the agent, then the agent is a patient in the new relation. 1999, Lloyd P. Gerson, Aristotle: Logic and metaphysics, page 127
   The starting point is that all events involve an agent and a patient. Agents and patients are modelled as (material or non-material) objects, and can therefore be represented as points in conceptual spaces. 2010, Mohua Banerjee, Anil Seth, Logic and Its Applications: Fourth Indian Conference, ICLA 2011, page 7