different between witness vs hostage

English

Alternative forms

• (archaic) witnesse

Etymology

From Middle English witnesse, from Old English ?ewitnes, equivalent to wit +? -ness. Cognate with Middle Dutch wetenisse (“witness, testimony”), Old High German gewiznessi (“testimony”), Icelandic vitni (“witness”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?w?tn?s/, /?w?tn?s/
• Rhymes: -?tn?s, -?tn?s
• Hyphenation: wit?ness

Noun

witness (countable and uncountable, plural witnesses)

1. (uncountable) Attestation of a fact or event; testimony.

   She can bear witness, since she was there at the time.

   • c. 1597, William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act IV, Scene ii^[1]:

     May we, with the warrant of womanhood and the witness of a good conscience, pursue him with any further revenge?
2. (countable) One who sees or has personal knowledge of something.

   As a witness to the event, I can confirm that he really said that.

   • c. 1589-93, William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act IV, Scene ii^[7]:

     […] thyself art witness— I am betrothed.

   • c. 1786, Robert Hall, A Reverie

     Upon my looking round, I was a witness to appearances which filled me with melancholy and regret.

3. (countable, law) Someone called to give evidence in a court.
4. (countable) One who is called upon to witness an event or action, such as a wedding or the signing of a document.

5. (countable) Something that serves as evidence; a sign or token.

   • Laban said to Jacob, […] This heap be witness, and this pillar be witness.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

witness (third-person singular simple present witnesses, present participle witnessing, simple past and past participle witnessed)

1. (transitive) To furnish proof of, to show.

   This certificate witnesses his presence on that day.

   • 1667: round he throws his baleful eyes / That witness'd huge affliction and dismay — John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1 ll. 56-7
2. (transitive) To take as evidence.
3. (transitive) To see or gain knowledge of through experience.

   He witnessed the accident.

   • 1801, Robert Hall, On Modern Infidelity

     This is but a faint sketch of the incalculable calamities and horrors we must expect, should we be so unfortunate as ever to witness the triumph of modern infidelity

   • 1803 (first published), John Marshall, The Life of George Washington

     General Washington did not live to witness the restoration of peace.

4. (intransitive, construed with to or for) To present personal religious testimony; to preach at (someone) or on behalf of.
   • 1998, "Niebuhr, Reinhold", Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, volume 6, page 842

     Instead, Niebuhr's God was the God witnessed to in the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, the Bible of the Christian world.

5. To see the execution of (a legal instrument), and subscribe it for the purpose of establishing its authenticity.

   to witness a bond or a deed

Synonyms

• certify

Translations

Anagrams

• wisents

English

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 obsid?ticum (“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 ??sl.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?h?st?d?/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?h?st?d?/
• Hyphenation: hos?tage

Noun

hostage (plural hostages)

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Something that constrains one's actions because it is at risk.
4. One who is compelled by something, especially something that poses a threat; one who is not free to choose their own course of action.
5. The condition of being held as security or to compel someone else to act or not act in a particular way.
   • 1740, Thomas Roe, The negociations ... in his embassy to the ottoman Porte from the year. 1621-28 inclusive. Now first publ. from the originals, page 376:

     […] which number, in Januarye last, the better halfe were already sett free, and departed, and the rest attend the oportunitye of good passadge, except only some few ordayned to bee kept in hostage, for the redemption of Turkes, pretended from us; […]

   • 1953, New York (State) Court of Appeals, New York Court of Appeals. Records and Briefs, page 37:

     Technically speaking, the Arnold infant was not "kidnapped" at all. Rather was she seized and held in hostage. The defendant "carried" no one away. It is true that for a brief space of time he "detained" the Arnold infant in the garage, but this act, in and of itself, does not constitute "kidnapping" in the legal sense of the word, since, in reality, he was holding her "in hostage"—as a pledge, or shield, or guarantee of his own safety. The appellant, who had spent some time in the armed forces[,] seized the child and "held her in hostage", just as prisoners of war are held in hostage.

   • 2015, Sarah Elizabeth Schantz, Fig, page 138:

     This is what my mother must have been like when she was twelve—that is, minus the dark hair and upside-down smile and the wild animal held in hostage.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

hostage (third-person singular simple present hostages, present participle hostaging, simple past and past participle hostaged)

1. (possibly nonstandard) To give (someone or something) as a hostage to (someone or something else).
   • 2003, Shirley Mask Connolly, Kashubia to Canada: Crossing on the Agda : an Emigration Story, page 16, quoting some earlier work:

     " […] 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."

2. (possibly nonstandard) 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.
   • 1983, Nursing Mirror:

     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 ...

   • 1987, Susan Catherine Crouch, Western responses to Tanzanian socialism, 1967-83, Gower Pub Co (?ISBN):

     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.

   • 1989, Daily Report: East Asia:

     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."

   • 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)

     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 […]

   • 1996, Arnold Molina Azurin, Beyond the Cult of Dissidence in Southern Philippines and Wartorn Zones in the Global Village (?ISBN):

     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 […] "

   • 2013, Edna O'Brien, Country Girl: A Memoir, Little, Brown (?ISBN):

     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.

See also

• hostage to fortune

Further reading

• hostage on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

References

• hostage at OneLook Dictionary Search
• hostage in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Anagrams

• he-goats, she-goat

Old French

Etymology

From Old French hoste + -age.

Noun

hostage m (oblique plural hostages, nominative singular hostages, nominative plural hostage)

1. hostage

Descendants

• ? English: hostage
• French: otage