hostage

Meanings

Noun

• A person given as a pledge or security for the performance of the conditions of a treaty or similar agreement, such as to ensure the status of a vassal.
• A person seized in order to compel another party to act (or refrain from acting) in a certain way, because of the threat of harm to the hostage.
• Something that constrains one's actions because it is at risk.
• One who is compelled by something, especially something that poses a threat; one who is not free to choose their own course of action.
• The condition of being held as security or to compel someone else to act or not act in a particular way.

Verb

• To give (someone or something) as a hostage to (someone or something else).
• To hold (someone or something) hostage, especially in a way that constrains or controls the person or thing held, or in order to exchange for something else.

Origin

• From Middle English hostage, ostage, from Old French hostage, ostage. This, in turn, is either from hoste + -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 obses, with the initial h- added under the influence of hoste or another word. Displaced native Old English ġīsl.