guest
/ɡɛst/ noun, verb, proper noun
Forms guests guesting guested
- noun A recipient of hospitality, especially someone staying by invitation at the house of another. “The guests were let in by the butler.”
- noun A patron or customer in a hotel etc. “Guests must vacate their rooms by 10 o'clock on their day of departure.”
- noun An invited visitor or performer to an institution or to a broadcast. “special guest”
- noun (computing) A user given temporary access to a system despite not having an account of their own.
- noun (zoology) Any insect that lives in the nest of another without compulsion and usually not as a parasite.
- noun (zoology) An inquiline.
- verb (intransitive) To appear as a guest, especially on a broadcast.
- verb (intransitive) As a musician: to play as a guest, providing an instrument that a band/orchestra does not normally have in its line up (for instance, percussion in a string band).
- verb (transitive, obsolete) To receive or entertain hospitably.
- proper noun A surname.
- proper noun A river in Virginia, United States, a tributary of the Clinch.
- proper noun An unincorporated community in DeKalb County, Alabama, United States.
- proper noun A visitor to any of the Disney theme parks
Synonyms
Etymology
From Middle English gest, from Old Norse gestr, which replaced or was merged with Old English ġiest, both from Proto-Germanic *gastiz, from Proto-Indo-European *gʰóstis (“stranger, guest, host, someone with whom one has reciprocal duties of hospitality”). Doublet of host, from Latin.
:* Bavarian Gåst (“guest”)
:* Dutch gast (“guest”)
:* German Gast (“guest”)
:* Luxembourgish Gaascht (“guest”)
:* Vilamovian gost (“guest”)
:* Yiddish גאַסט (gast, “guest”)
:* Danish gæst (“guest, visitor”)
:* Faroese and Icelandic gestur (“guest”)
:* Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk gjest (“guest”)
:* Swedish gäst (“guest”)
:* Gothic 𐌲𐌰𐍃𐍄𐍃 (gasts, “guest”)
Webster’s 1913
- noun A visitor; a person received and entertained in one's house or at one's table; a visitor entertained without pay. To cheer his gueste, whom he had stayed that night. Spenser.
- verb To receive or entertain hospitably. [Obs.] Sylvester.
- verb To be, or act the part of, a guest. [Obs.]
Etymology [OE. gest, AS. gæst, gest; akin to OS., D., & G. gust, Icel gestr, Sw. gäst, Dan. Gjäst, Goth. gast, Russ. goste, and to L. hostis enemy, stranger; the meaning stranger is the older one, but the root is unknown. Cf. Host an army, Hostile.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “guest”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details