patient

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. adj. Bearing or enduring pain, difficulty, provocation, or annoyance with calmness.
2. adj. Marked by or exhibiting calm endurance of pain, difficulty, provocation, or annoyance.
3. adj. Tolerant; understanding: an unfailingly patient leader and guide.
4. adj. Persevering; constant: With patient industry, she revived the failing business and made it thrive.
5. adj. Capable of calmly awaiting an outcome or result; not hasty or impulsive.
6. adj. Capable of bearing or enduring pain, difficulty, provocation, or annoyance: "My uncle Toby was a man patient of injuries” ( Laurence Sterne).
7. n. One who receives medical attention, care, or treatment.
8. n. Linguistics A noun or noun phrase identifying one that is acted upon or undergoes an action. Also called goal.
9. n. Archaic One who suffers.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. Enduring; physically able to support or endure; having such a bodily constitution as enables one to endure or to be proof against: followed by of before the thing endured: as, patient of labor or pain; patient of heat or cold.
2. Having or manifesting that temper or east of mind which endures pain, trial, provocation, or the like without murmuring or fretfulness; sustaining afflictions or evils with fortitude, calmness, or submission; full of composure or equanimity; submissive; unrepining: as, a patient person, or a person of patient temper; patient under afflictions.
3. Waiting or expecting with calmness or without discontent; not hasty; not over-eager or impetuous.
4. Persevering; constant in pursuit or exertion; calmly diligent.
5. Capable of bearing; susceptible.
6. Synonyms Uncomplaining, unrepining, long-suffering, brave.
7. Assiduous, indefatigable.
8. n. A person or thing that receives impressions from external agents; one who or that which is passively affected: opposed to agent.
9. n. A sufferer.
10. n. Specifically A sufferer under bodily indisposition undergoing medical treatment: commonly used as a correlative to physician or nurse.
11. n. Agent and patient. See agent.
12. Reflexively, to compose (one's self); be patient.
13. Receiving impressions; being the subject of external agents; passive.

Wiktionary

1. adj. content to wait if necessary; not losing one's temper while waiting; not bothered with having to wait; not unwilling to wait
2. n. A person or animal who receives treatment from a doctor or other medically educated person.
3. n. linguistics, grammar The noun or noun phrase that is semantically on the receiving end of a verb's action.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. adj. Having the quality of enduring; physically able to suffer or bear.
2. adj. Undergoing pains, trials, or the like, without murmuring or fretfulness; bearing up with equanimity against trouble; long-suffering.
3. adj. Constant in pursuit or exertion; persevering; calmly diligent.
4. adj. Expectant with calmness, or without discontent; not hasty; not overeager; composed.
5. adj. Forbearing; long-suffering.
6. n. One who, or that which, is passively affected; a passive recipient.
7. n. A person under medical or surgical treatment; -- correlative to physician or nurse.
8. v. obsolete To compose, to calm.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a person who requires medical care
2. adj. enduring trying circumstances with even temper or characterized by such endurance
3. n. the semantic role of an entity that is not the agent but is directly involved in or affected by the happening denoted by the verb in the clause