Hostile

How to spell hostile

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hostile

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hostile mean?

1. adjectiveShowing strong opposition, antagonism, or unfriendliness toward someone or something.

Hostile in a sentence

• The manager faced a hostile crowd at the public meeting.

• Negotiations broke down once both sides turned hostile.

Where does hostile come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin hostilis, meaning 'of or belonging to an enemy', which was built on the noun hostis. In its earliest sense hostis simply meant a stranger or a foreigner, but because strangers were so often viewed with suspicion, the word hardened into the meaning 'enemy' in classical Latin. English took the adjective in during the late 1500s, partly through French hostile, with the steady sense of 'unfriendly' or 'opposed'. The same hostis root sits behind a cluster of familiar relatives, including 'host' (in the sense of an army or a great multitude) and 'hostage', a captive once held as security against an enemy. The spelling trap is the ending: it is the Latin -ile suffix, so it finishes in -ile rather than the more common -al, and the unstressed final syllable gives no clear clue to the ear.

How the word is built

• hosti- (from Latin hostis: enemy, stranger)
• -ile (adjective suffix meaning 'pertaining to')