Pa″tient, n. 1. One who, or that which, is passively affected; a passive recipient.
Malice is a passion so impetuous and precipitate that it often involves the agent and the patient. Gov. of Tongue.
2. A person under medical or surgical treatment; — correlative to physician or nurse.
Like a physician,... seeing his patient in a pestilent fever. Sir P. Sidney.
In patient, a patient who receives lodging and food, as treatment, in a hospital or an infirmary. — Out patient, one who receives advice and medicine, or treatment, from an infirmary.