Host (amphibology)

Host, as an amphibological term, retains the meaning of hosting, that is, the organism that hosts a parasite or symbiont, although it is controversial and has many detractors that, also to avoid confusion, they prefer other alternatives. The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) proposes two main meanings, one for the client of a hotel establishment or the guest at a house by a host, and another of an amphibological order, outdated and already in disuse, to allude to the innkeeper or master of an inn and the person who hosts someone in his house. The use with this last meaning is discouraged by the RAE, as it generates confusion.

Word origin

Guest derives from the Latin term hospes, which is an ancient compound of two different notions: *hostis-pet-s. However, although the classical meaning of hostis is «enemy», the primitive meaning of the notion hostis is that of equality by compensation: it is a hostis i> the one who compensates the "donation" with a "counter-donation"". To explain the relationship between guest and enemy, it is usually accepted that one and the other derive from the meaning of foreigner, which is still attested in Latin by the “favorable foreigner”, hospes, and the «hostile foreigner», nemicus. The second component -pet —alternating with -pot or -pat— originally meant, in Indo-European, identity (“the same”) as in Lithuanian pats, but, used to indicate representativeness, it also became "master, owner or lord". Thus, -pot subsists in terms like Greek despotes and Slavic gaspadin. It also acquired domain significance as in "power", "powerful", "authority", "possession", etc.

In Latin literature

In reality, the words foreigner, enemy and guest are global and very summary notions that must be specified, interpreted in their historical context And social. Émile Benveniste provides a series of examples from ancient sources and related words that reveal the original meaning of hostis:

• In the Act of Twelve Tables, for example: adversus hostem aeterna auctoritas est, a phrase in which most words do not have the meaning of classic Latin, means "against a foreigner, a property claim is persistent", i.e., there is no maturity for a property claim when introduced against a foreigner.
• According to Latin grammar Sesto Pompeo Festo was called hosts those who enjoyed the same right as the Roman people and the meaning of hostire equated with the aequare (iquity, exchange): “Eius enim generis ab antiquis hostes appellabantur quod sont pari iure cum populo Romano, atque hostire putbatur pro aequare”. This news is known that hostis It was not exactly the alien, nor the enemy. The derivative network hostire makes it equal to referre gratiamI mean return a favor.
• The substantive hostimentum is referred as beneficii pensatio or aequamentum, meaning respectively "compensation of a benefit" or "allocation".
• Plauto writes: promito hostire contra ut merueriswhich means “I promise you a reciprocal service like the one you deserve” (Asylum 377).
• Varrón explains: Hostum vocant quod ex un facto olei reficitur“It is called hostus the amount of oil obtained after a single press operation” (De re rustica I 24.3). Here the product is seen as a counterpart.
• Hostorium: is a stick to use with a measure of arid capacity in order to ensure a constant level.
• According to Agustín de Hipona, among the ancient Roman gods there was also a goddess Hostilina who had the task of equating the ears or of making agricultural labors adequately compensated with the product of the harvest.
• Finally, the known word hostile it relates to the same family, indicates in its own sense: "the victim who serves to compensate the wrath of the gods", which indicates an offering in compensation and is distinguished from the victim of sacrifice in the Roman ritual.

Etymological continuity

Primary or derived nouns, verbs or adjectives, ancient terms of religious language or rural language, all are attested in Indo-European languages and confirm that the primitive meaning of hostire, and therefore Both the origin of the word hospes, is aequere: «compensation of a benefit, return the same, compensate, equalize». As Festus cites, the hostes enjoyed the same rights as the Romans, a hostis was not a foreigner in general, unlike the peregrinus who lived outside of the territory, hostis was the foreigner in whom rights equal to those of Roman citizens were recognized. This recognition of rights implied a certain relationship of reciprocity, it presupposed a convention. The alliance of equality and reciprocity that was established between this type of foreigner and the citizen of Rome led to the precise notion of hospitality. This word, which evidences the institution of hospitality, is very old, since in other Indo-European languages there are equivalents with the same origin and use as in Gothic gasts and Old Slavic gosti.

Hostis and xenos change meaning

When the old society became a nation, the relations between man and man, between clan and clan, are abolished; only the distinction between what is internal or external to the civitas ("city") subsists. Thus, the word hostis assumed a meaning of "hostile" and would no longer be applied to more than the enemy. The story of hostis summarizes the change that occurred in Roman institutions. Similarly, xenos, so well characterized as "guest" by Homer, later became simply "the foreigner", "the non-national".

Evolution of amphibology

Hostis was originally related to compensation, and the treatment that equalizes between different ones, and then meant “the person outside the clan with whom compensatory reciprocal exchange agreements are made”. It then comes to mean "benevolent foreigner" in hospes, although later hostis will mean the "enemy foreigner" from which current usages of host derive. and hostile.

The hospes (benevolent foreigner) could be dealt with in two different situations, when “he stays among us” and when “I stay among them”. Thus hospes lost the meaning of foreigner and came to have two opposite meanings with respect to who performs the action of hosting, «the hosted stranger» and «the stranger who hosts me». Thus arises an amphibology that is still present in the Latin languages, "the hosted" and "the host." Of course, one meaning, "the lodger", is much more frequently used than the other, because the situation of "a stranger staying among us" is more common than "one staying among strangers". Languages evolve avoiding amphibologies and that is why the least used term tends to be suppressed in use or modified.

Regarding the previous semantic evolution, the Royal Spanish Academy advises against the use of guest in the less used sense of "the one who hosts". Although it does this with one exception for which it does not dare to impose its recommendation and it is that in the scientific field the word host is frequently used with the meaning of the "organism that hosts" a parasite or a symbiont. This use is stimulated in part by the use made in other languages of equivalent scientific terms also derived from hostis. However, in the Hispanic scientific field, it is rejected with the same or more frequency due to its use contrary to the common meaning and is replaced by (or is preferred) the terms hospedador, hospedero, host or host.

The natural evolution towards deletion for host of the lesser-used meaning, «the host», has also been reinforced by the appearance of a much more recent term, host, with that unique meaning. ^{[citation needed]} The term host arose in the 17th century in France from the popular play Host by Molière, referring to a king of Thebes famous for his hospitality. This term also became popular in Spanish and in 1869 it was incorporated into the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy.

Correlated voices

• xenos and xenia
• munus and pulus