visitant

noun

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.”

   “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.”

   “The Company had now ſtaid ſo long, that Mrs. Fitzpatrick plainly perceived they all deſigned to ſtay out each other. She therefore reſolved to rid herſelf of Jones, he being the Viſitant, to whom ſhe thought the leaſt Ceremony was due.”

   “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.”

2. A spectre or ghost.

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

   “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.

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

adj

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.”

   “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.”