Definition of "tenant"

Long even before the last tenant had occupied it, the room had been regarded with fear and aversion, and the end of that last tenant had in no way lightened the gloom that hung about the place.

a. 1945, Arthur Morrison, The Thing in the Upper Room‎

You are just a tenant here, you say / Living in and out of this life / As cheaply as you can

1982, “The Sitting Room”, in The Sitting Room, performed by Anne Clark

sweet tenants of this grove

c. 1782-1783, William Cowper, Joy in Martyrdom

the happy tenant of your shade

1647, Abraham Cowley, The Wish

But not in silence pass Calypso's isles, / The sister tenants of the middle deep; [...]

1812, Lord Byron, “Canto II”, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. A Romaunt, London: Printed for John Murray, […]; William Blackwood, Edinburgh; and John Cumming, Dublin; by Thomas Davison, […], stanza XXVIII, page 75

What words are these have fall’n from me?⁠Can calm despair and wild unrest⁠Be tenants of a single breast,Or sorrow such a changeling be?

1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], canto XVI, page 26

His thin legs tenanted a pair of gambadoes fastened at the side with rusty clasps.

1814 July 7, [Walter Scott], Waverley; […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown

The felling of dense and lofty forests, which covered, even within the records of history, a considerable space on the globe, now tenanted by civilized man, must generally have lessened the amount of vegetable food throughout the space where these woods grew.

1835, Charles Lyell, chapter IX, in Principles of Geology […] , 4th edition, volume III, London: John Murray, Book III, page 129

They lived in palatial residences […] their harems tenanted by numerous women […]

1922, Maneckji Nusserwanji Dhalla, Zoroastrian Civilization‎, page 235