Passenger

How to spell passenger

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce passenger

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does passenger mean?

1. nounA person who travels in a vehicle, aircraft, ship or train but does not operate it.

Passenger in a sentence

• Every passenger on the flight was asked to fasten a seatbelt.

• The taxi driver waited while the passenger counted out the fare.

Where does passenger come from?

Language of origin: French

This word travelled into English in the late 1300s from the Old French passagier, later passager, which simply meant 'a traveller' or 'one who passes through'. That French word grew from passage, 'a crossing or way through', which in turn rests on the Late Latin passare, 'to step or to pass', formed from passus, 'a step or pace'. The most striking feature of the spelling is the intrusive letter n, which was not in the original French and is not justified by the root at all; English speakers slipped it in during the 1500s, exactly as they did with messenger (from message), harbinger and scavenger. That stray n is precisely the spelling trap, since the word is built on pass and passage, neither of which contains an n. The same passus root still survives in the modern words 'pace', 'passage' and 'pass' itself.

How the word is built

• pass (from Old French passage: a passing, travel)
• -enger (agent ending, with an intrusive -n-)