Hostage

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For the 2005 film, see Hostage (film).

A hostage is a person (sometimes another entity) which is held by a captor in order to compel another party to act or refrain from acting in a particular way.

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Scope of use

Hostage taking is often politically motivated or intended to raise a ransom (in kind of money) or to enforce an exchange (against other hostages or even condemned convicts).

As the probable etymology from the Latin hostis ('guest') testifies, it has a history of political and military use dating back thousands of years, where political authorities or generals would legally agree to hand over one or usually several hostages in the custody of the other side, as guarantee of good faith in the observance of obligations (as on the signing of a peace treaty, in the hands of the victor), or even exchange hostages as mutual assurance (such as an armistice). Especially major powers, such as Rome and the British regarding colonial principalities (mainly in India), would receive many such political hostages, often offspring of the elite (even princ(ess)es) who were generally treated according to their rank and put to a subtle long-term use: they could be given an elitist education (possibly even a religious conversion), say at court or at Eton, that might influence them culturally and open the way for an amical political line if ascending to power after release!

Taking hostages is today considered a crime and/or (depending upon the, mainly political, intentions) terrorist act; the use of the word in this sense of abductee became current only in the 1970s. The criminal activity is known as kidnapping. An acute situation where hostages are kept in a building or a vehicle that has been taken over by armed terrorists or common criminals is often called a hostage crisis.

The word "hostage" is sometimes used metaphorically, for example "The failure of the plans showed that yet again the whole matter was hostage to one traffic delay caused by unannounced roadworks stopping a man from catching a plane.".

In old Germanic peoples the word for "hostage" (gīsl and similar) sometimes occurred as part of a man's name.

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