attendee

attend +‎ -ee

attendee (plural attendees)

1. A person who is in attendance or in the audience of an event.
   • 2000, Russian Government, Federal Constitutional Law №3 dated December 25, 2000

     During the official performance of the National Anthem of the Russian Federation all attendees are supposed to stand and men take their hats off.

2. A visitor or participant of an event.
   • 2002, Sam Williams, Free as in Freedom, chapter 11

     O'Reilly, the summit host, remembers a particularly insightful comment from Torvalds, a summit attendee.

3. (uncommon) A person who is attended.

• (participant in an event): audience (member), participant
• (person in attendance): attender, audience (member)

Attender was originally the only word for a person attending. [1] As with most nouns formed from verbs, as payer, trainer, employer, it was the receiver of action that was formed with -ee, as with payee, trainee, employee. In the 1980s with the advent of spell-checkers, the word attender was erroneously flagged as misspelled and attendee was its replacement. Since then attender is no longer in popular usage.

• attendant

• edentate