noun
- a person who is traveling in an automobile, bus, train, airplane, or other conveyance, especially one who is not the driver, pilot, or the like.
- a wayfarer; traveler.
noun
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- a person travelling in a car, train, boat, etc, not driven by him
- (as modifier)a passenger seat
- mainly British a member of a group or team who is a burden on the others through not participating fully in the work
n.early 14c., passager “passer-by,” from Old French passagier “traveler, passer-by” (Modern French passager), noun use of passagier (adj.) “passing, fleeting, traveling,” from passage (see passage). And in this I resemble the Lappwing, who fearing hir young ones to be destroyed by passengers, flyeth with a false cry farre from their nestes, making those that looke for them seeke where they are not …. [John Lyly, “Euphues and His England,” 1580] The -n- was added early 15c. (cf. messenger, harbinger, scavenger, porringer). Meaning “one traveling in a vehicle or vessel” first attested 1510s. Passenger-pigeon of North America so called from 1802; extinct since 1914.