hostage
IPA: hˈɑstɪdʒ
noun
- 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.
- 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.
- Something that constrains one's actions because it is at risk.
- One who is compelled by something, especially something that poses a threat; one who is not free to choose their own course of action.
- The condition of being held as security or to compel someone else to act or not act in a particular way.
verb
- (possibly nonstandard) To give (someone or something) as a hostage to (someone or something else).
- (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.
Advertisement
Examples of "hostage" in Sentences
- Call in the hostage negotiators
- The Americans took the natives hostage.
- He sends the money out with one of the hostages.
- Hostages were exchanged as sureties for the oaths.
- The hostages gave the Athenians a bargaining chip.
- They infiltrate the building and take the scientists hostage.
- After ten days, the SNM released the hostages unconditionally.
- On the sixth day of the siege, the kidnappers killed a hostage.
- Devolution in the UK need not take the rest of the world hostage.
- The hostage money is probably the method of financing of the group.
Advertisement
Advertisement