HOST
Wild Word Friday!
It’s unusual to find a word that in its noun form has two very opposite meanings, but HOST is one of those contrary words. In its most ancient form – ghosti, an Indo-European word – it meant stranger or guest. Right away you can see the dichotomy. A guest is someone we welcome, a stranger – maybe not. In Latin, the word morphed into hostis, which meant stranger and eventually came to mean enemy. You can see where our English word hostile originated.
In Middle English the word became hoste and took on several meanings: 1) the victim of a sacrifice; 2) one who welcomes or entertains guests; and 3) the guest himself. Today in modern English, we keep the vestiges of that original meaning when we refer to the sacraments of holy communion in the Christian church as the HOST. We also refer to someone or something who is the victim of parasitic invasion as a HOST, and, of course, the HOST is that kind person who welcomes us into his or her home for a visit.
Do you enjoy enjoy the role of being a HOST (the happy meaning) and having people visit you?
Blessings!
Sue
(Some information from WEBSTER’S NEW WORLD DICTIONARY OF THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE. Photo from Wikipedia.)
I love being a host, I love having chats, good food and great craic (the Irish word for…. well…. err… a lot of things ha! mainly fun ) with family.
Love that Irish word, Jackie! And with your cooking skills, I bet a lot of folks love coming to your house, too. My cooking skills? Well, let’s just say that people who come to our house for dinner never quite know how good that meal will be. Unless Neil is cooking steak on the grill. Then we’re safe! (Sad, though, for our vegan friends.)