Hostageship
noun
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 A condition of being held as surety for a pledge, as to appear before a magistrate for trial after release from gaol. countable, historical, uncountable
"English, Norman and French tradition seem all to point to an ancient and extremely rigorous form of suretyship or hostageship which would have rendered the surety liable to suffer the punishment that was hanging over the head of the released prisoner."
Example
More examples"English, Norman and French tradition seem all to point to an ancient and extremely rigorous form of suretyship or hostageship which would have rendered the surety liable to suffer the punishment that was hanging over the head of the released prisoner."
Etymology
From hostage + -ship.
More for "hostageship"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.