hostage

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A person held by force, used to make others do what the captor wants.

   The robbers took a bank teller hostage and demanded a getaway car.

2. 2
   noun

   Someone or something controlled or trapped by a particular situation or force.

   The whole project became a hostage to the company's shrinking budget.

3. 3
   verb

   To hold someone or something captive in order to force a result or trade.

   Critics said the negotiators were hostaging the deal to win extra concessions.

Simplified etymology

Hostage is unrelated to host. It ultimately goes back to Latin ob, “towards” or “against,” and sedēre, “to sit,” through a term referring to the state of being held as security for the fulfilment of an undertaking.

From Middle English hostage, ostage, from Old French hostage, ostage. This, in turn, is either from Old French hoste (“host”) + -age (in which case the sense development is from taking someone into "lodging" to taking them into "captivity", to applying the term to a captive), or is from Vulgar Latin obsidāticum (“condition of being held captive”), from Latin obses (“hostage, captive”), with the initial h- added under the influence of hoste or another word. Displaced native Old English ġīsl.

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary