visitor

Etymology

Partly from Middle English visiter, visitere, equivalent to visit + -er; and partly from Middle English visitour, from Anglo-Norman visitour, from Old French visetëor.

noun

1. Someone who visits someone else; someone staying as a guest.
2. Someone who pays a visit to a specific place or event; a sightseer or tourist.
3. (sports, usually in the plural) 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. May 14, 2011, 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.
5. (ufology) An extraterrestrial being on Earth for any reason.
   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 conversation, and dancing. 2001, Donald Goldsmith, Tobias C. Owen, The Search for Life in the Universe, University Science Books, page 511
   The visitor in Man Facing South-east claims pure altruism; Rantes (Hugo Soto) wants to alleviate the suffering of the poor and helpless. 2004, Carol Schwartz Ellis, Sean Redmond (editor), With Eyes Uplifted: Space Aliens as Sky Gods in Liquid Metal: The Science Fiction Film Reader, Wallflower Press, page 145
   The tower radioed the flight leader, Captain Thomas F. Mantell, Jr., and requested that he engage and attempt to identify the strange visitor. 2007, Frank G. Wilkinson, The Golden Age of Flying Saucers: Classic UFO Sightings, Saucer Crashes and Extraterrestrial Contact Encounters, Lulu.com, page 37
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
   Though Clube and Napier’s cometary visitor was not a planet, the story is surprisingly close to that of Worlds in Collision. 2005, J. Douglas Kenyon, Forbidden History: Prehistoric Technologies, Extraterrestrial Intervention, And The Suppressed Origins Of Civilization, Inner Traditions * Bear & Company, page 64
7. (Britain) 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. (software engineering) The object in the visitor pattern that performs an operation on the elements of a structure one by one.