hostage

Pluralhostages

Formshostages, hostaging, hostaged

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A person seized and held to force another party to act, or refrain from acting, under threat of harm to the captive.

   Negotiators worked through the night to secure the release of the hostage.

   The gang held three hostages in the bank vault for hours.

   Similarcaptive, prisoner

   Note

   Here the captive is taken by force, the reverse of the treaty pledge, which was handed over by agreement. The usual verb is take: a robber surprised mid-crime may take a hostage to use as a shield, and the ending is a release. The noun also works as a modifier, as in the title of James L. Greenstone's The Elements of Police Hostage and Crisis Negotiations (2013).

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The state of being held as security, or held in order to compel someone else to act or not act in a particular way.

   The diplomat was held hostage for nearly a year before his release.

   Being taken hostage left lasting trauma on the survivors.

   Similarprisoner

   Note

   The noun of condition, used after verbs such as hold, keep and take. Held hostage, with no article, is the familiar form, but a construction with in has a long record. Thomas Roe writes of some "kept in hostage." The New York Court of Appeals in 1953 describes a child "seized and held in hostage," and Sarah Elizabeth Schantz's Fig (2015) still has a wild animal "held in hostage."

3. 3
   nouncountable

   Something at risk that limits or constrains one's choices, because losing it would be too costly.

   By signing the long lease, the company made its finances a hostage to an uncertain market.

   Every public boast becomes a hostage to fortune if circumstances change.

   Note

   Most often met in the fixed phrase hostage to fortune: to offer or give a hostage to fortune is to make a pledge or boast that later events may turn against you. The pattern stays open, though. Writers speak of a hostage to the future or to prosperity, and a large family can be one. Unlike the person under compulsion, this hostage is what you put at risk, not who you are.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A person who is compelled by some force or threat, and so is not free to choose their own course of action.

   Patients can become hostages to a treatment they fear but cannot stop.

   He was a hostage to his addiction long before he admitted it.

   Similarslave, prisoner, captive

   Note

   A person caught by a force rather than by a captor: an ego, a system, a lender. It almost always takes to, as in a hostage to your ego, a hostage to a system, or a hostage to the International Monetary Fund. Countries qualify as readily as people. Become is a natural partner verb, and David Wingrove's narrator becomes "in that instant a hostage to Fate."

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A person given as a pledge or security to guarantee that the terms of a treaty or similar agreement will be honored.

   Under the treaty's terms, the duke surrendered his heir as a hostage to the emperor.

   Noble families often sent their children as hostages to secure a vassal's loyalty.

   Similarpledge

   Note

   The diplomatic sense, in which the hostage is handed over rather than seized. The word came through Middle English from Old French. It derives either from hoste, "host," plus -age, so that someone taken into lodging became someone taken into captivity, or from Vulgar Latin obsidāticum. Adam J. Kosto's Hostages in the Middle Ages (2012) explains why sons were the usual pledge: ties of blood magnified the threat. The practice itself is hostageship.

6. 6
   verbnonstandardtransitive

   To hold a person or thing captive, especially so as to constrain or control it, or to exchange it for something else.

   The hackers hostaged the hospital's records and demanded payment.

   Armed groups often hostage civilians to gain leverage over the government.

   Similarseize, kidnap, abduct, hijack

   Oppositerelease, free

   Note

   The holding verb thrives in the passive with to, and its captive is often an abstraction: flexibility of hours "hostaged to availability of work," or a country's development not "hostaged to the capriciousness of the West." Literal captives appear too, such as senators hostaged for a $500,000 ransom. The same caution applies as for the giving verb: in formal writing, held hostage is the safer choice.

7. 7
   verbnonstandardtransitive

   To give a person or thing to another party to be held as a hostage.

   To end the siege, the city hostaged several elders to the conquering army.

   Ancient kings would hostage their heirs to powerful neighbors to secure alliances.

   Note

   Turning the noun into a verb is possibly nonstandard, so in formal prose give as a hostage is the safer choice. The verb inflects regularly as hostages, hostaging and hostaged. It takes to for the party who receives the pledge: six departments of France were "hostaged to the Germans."

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