Occupant

How to spell occupant

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce occupant

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does occupant mean?

1. nounA person who lives in, uses, or is present in a particular place, building, or vehicle.

Occupant in a sentence

• The previous occupant left the flat in spotless condition.

• The airbag protected the front-seat occupant during the crash.

Where does occupant come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin verb occupare, which meant 'to seize', 'to take hold of', or 'to take possession of', formed from the prefix ob- ('over' or 'towards') joined to capere ('to take or grasp'). From that verb Latin produced the form occupans, the present participle meaning 'one who is taking possession', and it is this participial stem that gives us the -ant ending. English absorbed the word through French in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when it settled into the legal and everyday sense of the person who actually holds or lives in a property rather than merely owns it. The same capere root quietly powers a large family of English words, including capture, capable, and recipient, all of which involve some idea of taking. The spelling trap lives at the start: the doubled c reflects the assimilated Latin prefix ob- becoming oc- before the c of capere, so the two c's are doing real historical work.

How the word is built

• occup- (from Latin occupare: to seize, take possession)
• -ant (agent noun suffix: one who does)