hostage
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈhɒs.tɪd͡ʒ/
ipa: /ˈhɑs.tɪd͡ʒ/
Forms: form: hostages
form: hostaging
form: hostaged
form: hostaged
Etymology: 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.
Senses: examples: text: […] in voting the prolongation of the military budget on a war estimate for a span of three years, contemplates, it is said, a speedy reoccupation of the six departments of France which were hostaged to the Germans at the termination of the war.
ref: 2003, Shirley Mask Connolly, Kashubia to Canada: Crossing on the Agda : an Emigration Story, page 16, quoting some earlier work
glosses: To give (someone or something) as a hostage to (someone or something else).
examples: text: Flexibility of hours is now hostaged to availability of work. Yet, despite these obvious drawbacks the appeal to nurses of freelancing seems to live on. The chief advantage of agency work is the lack of commitment or not being bound by contract ...
ref: 1983, Nursing Mirror:
text: Thus, via the Arusha Declaration the Tanzania Government were demonstrating that its country's development would not be hostaged to the capriciousness of the West.
ref: 1987, Susan Catherine Crouch, Western responses to Tanzanian socialism, 1967-83, Gower Pub Co, →ISBN:
text: Warning the United States against further intervention, the Reformist Forces said: “Never again shall the Filipino be hostaged to foreign might. The Filipino has (his) own mind with the Philippine interest in the highest priority."
ref: 1989, Daily Report: East Asia:
text: A number of the nation's leading senators were hostaged for a $500,000 ransom and the release of Sandinistas held prisoner by Somoza. To the dictator's everlasting chagrin, Daniel Ortega was one of the commandos returned to the rebels […]
ref: 1991, Donovan Orman Roberts, Stubborn ounces--just scales: with Witness for Peace in Nicaragua : a gringo's reflections, observations, and sermons, Css Pub Co, →ISBN:
text: He recounts how a boatload of Bajau were used as human targets by an armed band in the South, and the surviving women were hostaged for ransom: "Since everyone knew the Bajau were nearly all subsistence fishermen and the poorest […]"
ref: 1996, Arnold Molina Azurin, Beyond the Cult of Dissidence in Southern Philippines and Wartorn Zones in the Global Village, →ISBN:
text: He was annoyed at having to get out to open the green gates, and then it was on down past the olive groves and the vineyards to the villa, in which I was hostaged for eleven days.
ref: 2013, Edna O'Brien, Country Girl: A Memoir, Little, Brown, →ISBN:
glosses: 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.