noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   One who is responsible for capturing one or more people and using their detainment and the threat to their well-being as a means of gaining power and leverage in the pursuit of their interests.

Example

More examples

"The hostage-taker activated the timer of the bomb."

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.