patient: [14] Etymologically, a patient is someone who is ‘suffering’. The word comes via Old French from the present participle of the Latin verb patī ‘suffer’ (source also of English passion and passive). As an adjective it had already in Latin taken on its present-day sense of ‘bearing affliction with calmness’, but the medical connotations of the noun are a post- Latin development. => passion, passive[patient etymology, patient origin, 英语词源]