Other forms: recipients
A recipient is somebody who receives something. A letter, a prize, an organ, a payment.
It is the formal word, and it belongs to official writing where the neutral term is needed: the recipient of the award, benefit recipients, the intended recipient of an email. Medicine uses it precisely for transplants, where a donor and a recipient are the two halves of the operation. Everyday speech says whoever got it. The verb is receive, and the noun receipt is the proof of having done so.
1nounrecipientA person who receives something.
“The recipient of the letter never replied.”
A recipient is one who receives, from Latin recipiō, and the verb hidden inside it means to take. Receiving is described as a taking, seen from the other end.
Proto-Indo-European
*keh₂p-
Latin
recipiēns
Middle French
récipient
English, today
recipient
Built from
Borrowed from Middle French récipient, from Latin recipiēns, present participle of recipiō (“to receive”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA