passenger

英文词源

passenger

passenger: [14] Originally a passenger was a passager – someone who goes on a ‘passage’, makes a journey. The word was borrowed from Old French passager, at first an adjective meaning ‘passing’, which was derived from passage. The n began to appear in the mid-15th century, a product of the same phonetic process as produced the n of harbinger and messenger.
=> pass

passenger (n.)

early 14c., passager "passer-by," from Old French passagier "traveler, passer-by" (Modern French passager), noun use of passagier (adj.) "passing, fleeting, traveling," from passage (see passage).

And in this I resemble the Lappwing, who fearing hir young ones to be destroyed by passengers, flyeth with a false cry farre from their nestes, making those that looke for them seeke where they are not .... [John Lyly, "Euphues and His England," 1580]

The -n- was added early 15c. (compare messenger, harbinger, scavenger, porringer). Meaning "one traveling in a vehicle or vessel" first attested 1510s. Passenger-pigeon of North America so called from 1802; extinct since 1914.