visitor

Meanings

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. Someone, or a team, that is playing away from home.
4. A person authorized to visit an institution to see that it is being managed properly.
5. An extraterrestrial being on Earth.
6. An object which lands or passes by Earth or its orbit.
7. 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.

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. By surface analysis, visit + -or.