Etymology: < Anglo-Norman and Middle French pacient, patient (French patient) (adjective) tolerant (first half of the 12th cent. in Anglo-Norman as pacient ), enduring hardship without complaint (second half of the 14th cent.), undergoing an action (1370–2 in philosophical context), (noun) sick person (14th cent.), person who undergoes an action (c1380), and its etymon classical Latin patient-, patiēns able or willing to endure or undergo, capable of enduring hardship, long-suffering, tolerant (in post-classical Latin also as noun, person who endures (5th cent.), person receiving medical treatment (from 13th cent. in British sources), person who undergoes some action (a1250, c1470 in British sources in philosophical context)), use as adjective of present participle of patī to suffer, perhaps < the same Indo-European base as ancient Greek πήμα suffering. Compare (all earliest in sense A. 1a) Old Occitan pacien (c1200 as adjective, c1300 as noun in medical sense), Italian paziente (13th cent. as adjective, c1350 as noun in medical sense), Spanish paciente (1251 or earlier as adjective, 14th cent. or earlier in form paçiente as noun in medical sense, a1418 or earlier in sense ‘person who undergoes an action’ in philosophical context), Portuguese paciente (13th cent. as adjective in form †paciinte), Catalan pacient (a1315 as adjective and noun in medical sense).With patient dock (see patient dock n. at Compounds 1) compare earlier patience dock n. With senses A. 2b, B. 4b compare post-classical Latin patiens, also casus patiens, used in French context by Troubetskoy 1929, in Bull. de la Soc. de Linguistique de Paris 29 170.

Etymology: < patient adj. Compare Middle French, French patienter to be patient, show patience (1557 used reflexively, 1573 used intransitively), Italian pazientare (a1527, used intransitively).