ATTENDEE

attendant, attender, attendee, meeter

(noun) a person who is present and participates in a meeting; “he was a regular attender at department meetings”; “the gathering satisfied both organizers and attendees”

Source: WordNet® 3.1

Etymology

Noun

attendee (plural attendees)

A person who is in attendance or in the audience of an event.

A visitor or participant of an event.

(uncommon) A person who is attended.

Synonyms

• (participant in an event): audience (member), participant

• (person in attendance): attender, audience (member)

Attender was originally the only word for a person attending. 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.