guest

Meanings

Noun

• A recipient of hospitality, especially someone staying by invitation at the house of another.
• A patron or customer in a hotel etc.
• An invited visitor or performer to an institution or to a broadcast.
• A user given temporary access to a system despite not having an account of their own.
• Any insect that lives in the nest of another without compulsion and usually not as a parasite.
• An inquiline.

Verb

• to appear as a guest, especially on a broadcast
• as a musician, to play as a guest, providing an instrument that a band/orchestra does not normally have in its line up (for instance, percussion in a string band)
• To receive or entertain hospitably.

Origin

• From Middle English gest, from Old Norse gestr, which replaced or was merged with Old English ġiest, both from Proto-Germanic *gastiz, from Proto-Indo-European *gʰóstis ("stranger, guest, host, someone with whom one has reciprocal duties of hospitality"). Cognate with German Gast ("guest"). host, from Latin.