host
Noun pluralhosts
Pluralhosts
- 1To act as host: to receive and entertain guests, to organize and run an event, or to present a show.
The museum agreed to host the traveling exhibition.
She hosts a weekly podcast about local history.
UsageCommon objects: host a party, host a conference, host a show; also host someone for dinner.
Similarstage, hold, present, organize, run
Note
The verb takes as its object whatever the noun can preside over: a conference to be run, a show to be presented, even a piece of writing. Suzan Bedrosian, in Gay Community News in 1984, says an issue hosted an article by Nancy Langer. Hosting a show means fronting it, and hosting a conference means organizing it. The context usually makes clear which role is meant.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 1 fact
- Suzan Bedrosian wrote in Gay Community News in 1984 that it hosted an article by Nancy Langer. en.wiktionary.org
- 2A person or organization that receives, welcomes, and entertains guests, whether socially, commercially, or officially.
The host welcomed each arriving guest with a warm handshake.
Our hosts had prepared rooms for all the visiting relatives.
UsagePairs with guest: be a good host, play host to visitors.
Oppositeguest
Note
Three separate words share this spelling, and this is the one made for hospitality: Latin hospes, through Old French, from a Proto-Indo-European compound of *gʰóstis and *pótis. The army of the "multitude" noun and the Eucharistic bread descend instead from Latin hostis and hostia. Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida sets the fashionable host beside his parting guest, the partner word this one is always measured against.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 6 facts
- The hospitality, army/multitude, and Eucharistic nouns have three separate etymologies. en.wiktionary.org
- The hospitality noun comes through Old French from Latin hospes. en.wiktionary.org
- Latin hospes ultimately derives from a Proto-Indo-European compound of *gʰóstis and *pótis. en.wiktionary.org
- The army/multitude noun ultimately derives from Latin hostis. en.wiktionary.org
- The Eucharistic noun ultimately derives from Latin hostia. en.wiktionary.org
- Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida juxtaposes a fashionable host and his departing guest; Ulysses speaks the passage. folger.edu
- 3The person who introduces performers, addresses the audience, and guides a show from start to finish.
The talk show host opened with a monologue about the week's news.
Viewers tuned in mainly to watch their favorite late-night hosts.
UsageCommon compounds: talk show host, game show host; the host of a show.
Similarpresenter
- 4Of a place or thing, to provide a home for something or hold it, such as wildlife, a building, or a collection.
The university's library hosts one of the country's oldest map collections.
Coral reefs host an astonishing variety of fish, sponges, and other sea life.
UsageCommon in guidebooks and science writing; plainer choices are has or is home to.
Similarhouse, hold, harbor, contain
Note
Here the subject is a place or thing, not a person, and nobody plays at hospitality: a valley hosts a rare orchid, a museum hosts a collection, a reef hosts fish. The verb borrows the picture of someone receiving guests, casting what is contained as residents.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- The containment sense is a figurative application of the guest-receiving sense of host. en.wiktionary.org
- 5To run software or a service on a computer so that remote users or processes can access it.
The university hosts its online courses on dedicated servers.
Many startups choose to host their applications in the cloud.
UsageHost a site or app on a server or in the cloud; the service is the object.
Similarrun
Note
The service is the object, and the subject is either the machine that runs it or the organization behind that machine: a server hosts a website, and so does the company that rents the server. Selden E. Ball, Jr., writing in 1987, contrasts outbound traffic, when a machine accesses another system, with inbound traffic, when the local system is hosting a session. The verb names the serving side of the connection.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 1 fact
- Selden E. Ball, Jr. contrasted outbound access with inbound hosting in 1987. Wiktionary attributes the passage to his Usenet post of May 7, 1987, titled “Re: Ethernet Terminal Concentrators”. en.wiktionary.org
- 6A person, organization, or place that holds an event, providing the venue or organizing and running it.
The stadium served as host for the championship final.
Several venues competed to be the host of the summit.
UsageOften play host to an event, or before a noun: host city, host nation.
- 7An animal, plant, or cell that another organism, such as a parasite or virus, or foreign genetic material lives in or depends on.
The parasite cannot reproduce without a suitable host.
Mosquitoes carry the pathogen from one host to the next.
Note
Ecology borrows the image of the welcoming host, with the harbored organism cast as a guest, usually an unwelcome one. Specialists qualify the word by role: a reservoir host is one that harbors a disease and keeps it circulating, and bats and rodents are studied side by side as reservoir hosts. Viruses are the extreme case, unable to reproduce at all without the host they infect.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 5 facts
- The biological meaning belongs to the same word history as the host who receives guests. en.wiktionary.org
- The hosted organism can be described as a guest, often parasitic. en.wikipedia.org
- A reservoir host harbors an infectious agent and supports its continued existence and transmission. archive.cdc.gov
- Researchers compare bats and rodents as reservoir hosts. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Viruses require infected host cells to reproduce. genome.gov
- 8A large number of people or things, usually in the phrase a host of.
The report raised a host of new questions for the committee.
A host of small errors had crept into the final document.
UsageMostly a host of + a plural noun: a host of questions, a whole host of reasons.
Similarmultitude, raft, slew, range, array
Note
The army of the "multitude" noun has thinned into simple abundance, though Wordsworth's "crowd, / A host, of golden daffodils" keeps a trace of the massed throng.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- The abundance sense shares its etymology with the army or multitude sense. en.wiktionary.org
- William Wordsworth wrote the quoted words in 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud'. gutenberg.org
- 9A computer attached to a network, identified by its own network address.
Administrators assigned a unique name to each host in the data center.
The firewall blocks traffic from any host outside the company network.
Note
Networking's broadest word for a machine: any computer on the network counts, whether it serves data to thousands or simply requests it. Engineers use the word to set the end points that send and receive data apart from intermediary devices that only forward traffic between them. The same picture of a machine at the network's edge underlies the verb for running remote services.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 2 facts
- Network hosts are end systems that run applications, including services. rfc-editor.org
- Technical terminology distinguishes hosts from intermediary devices that forward packets. rfc-editor.org
Less common meanings
- 10The bread or wafer used in the Christian Eucharist, especially once it has been consecrated.
The priest elevated the host during the Mass.
Communicants knelt at the rail to receive the host.
Similarwafer
Note
The name treats the bread as an offering: its Latin source, hostia, meant "sacrificial victim," and hostie is its doublet. In Catholic and related traditions, the consecrated wafer of unleavened bread is held to become the Body of Christ. That phrase can stand for the host itself, and it is the more devotional of the two names.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- The Eucharistic noun derives ultimately from Latin hostia, meaning sacrificial victim. en.wiktionary.org
- Hostie is an etymological doublet of the Eucharistic noun host. en.wiktionary.org
- Unleavened Eucharistic bread is used in the Latin Catholic tradition. vatican.va
- Catholic teaching holds that the consecrated bread becomes Christ's Body. usccb.org
- 11A great multitude of people gathered as an army; also used in religious contexts, as in a heavenly host of angels.
A mighty host advanced across the plain at dawn.
Scripture describes a host of angels praising in the heavens.
Similararmy, multitude, horde, legion, throng
Note
The military host wears its origin openly: Latin hostis meant a foreign enemy, as opposed to inimicus, a personal one. Oddly, the same root gives guest, its doublet. The word now has an elevated ring. It is at home in the religious phrase heavenly host, in Carlyle's rhetoric, and in Tolkien's "hosts of Mordor," where the plural suggests armies beyond counting.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 5 facts
- The military sense of host derives from Latin hostis, meaning a foreign enemy, distinguished from inimicus, a personal enemy. en.wiktionary.org
- Host in its military sense and guest share an etymological root and are doublets. en.wiktionary.org
- Heavenly host occurs in religious writing. en.wikisource.org
- Thomas Carlyle uses host rhetorically. gutenberg.org
- The wording hosts of Mordor occurs in Tolkien's writing. en.wikipedia.org
- 12A paid male companion who offers conversation and sometimes sex, as at certain bars in Japan.
She requested her favorite host as soon as she entered the club.
The most popular hosts earn large sums from devoted regulars.
- 13To lodge or stay overnight at an inn.
Where you shall host.
c. 1604, William Shakespeare, “All’s Well, that Ends Well”Note
A dead Shakespearean usage in which the traveler, not the innkeeper, does the hosting: All's Well That Ends Well has "Where you shall host," meaning where you will lodge. It is intransitive and takes no object. Readers meet it only in older texts. In new writing it would be misread at once as the everyday verb, so lodge or stay is the safe choice.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 3 facts
- The lodging sense is obsolete and intransitive, taking no object. en.wiktionary.org
- Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well contains the quoted words; the Widow addresses the traveller Helena, who will lodge at her house. gutenberg.org
- In this sense, host takes no object. en.wiktionary.org
- 14Within a multiple system, the primary member who fronts (takes control of the shared body) most often.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origins
*gʰóstipotis, a Proto-Indo-European word for a "master of guests," joined *gʰóstis, meaning "stranger, guest, enemy," with *pótis, meaning "owner, master, host, husband." It survived as an old compound made of hostis plus the root of potis, which gave Latin hospes, "a host, guest, visitor, or stranger." That passed into Old French as oste (French hôte) and into Middle English as hoste, and English has used it since the 13th century.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 11 facts
- Proto-Indo-European *gʰóstipotis meant "master of guests." en.wiktionary.org
- *gʰóstipotis combined *gʰóstis and *pótis. en.wiktionary.org
- *gʰóstis meant stranger, guest, or enemy. en.wiktionary.org
- *pótis meant owner, master, host, or husband. en.wiktionary.org
- The inherited compound combined hostis and the root of potis. en.wiktionary.org
- The compound developed into Latin hospes. en.wiktionary.org
- Latin hospes meant host, guest, visitor, or stranger. en.wiktionary.org
- Old French oste descended from Latin hospes through its accusative hospitem. en.wiktionary.org
- Modern French hôte descended from Old French oste. en.wiktionary.org
- Middle English borrowed hoste from Old French. en.wiktionary.org
- English has used host since the 13th century. en.wiktionary.org
From Middle English oost, borrowed from Old French ost, from Latin hostis ('foreign enemy', as opposed to inimicus, a personal enemy), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰóstis. It is a doublet of 'guest.'
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 6 facts
- Host derives from Middle English oost. en.wiktionary.org
- Middle English oost was borrowed from Old French ost. en.wiktionary.org
- Old French ost derives from Latin hostis. en.wiktionary.org
- Latin hostis means a foreign enemy, distinguished from inimicus, a personal enemy. en.wiktionary.org
- Latin hostis ultimately derives from Proto-Indo-European *gʰóstis. en.wiktionary.org
- Host and guest are doublets. en.wikipedia.org
Latin hostia ("sacrificial victim") gave Old French hoiste and then Middle English host. Hostie is a doublet.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Latin hostia meant “sacrificial victim” and gave Old French hoiste, from which Middle English host derived. en.wiktionary.org
- Hostie is a doublet of host. en.wiktionary.org