Hostilities

How to spell hostilities

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce hostilities

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hostilities mean?

1. nounActs of open conflict or fighting, especially the armed engagements of a war.
2. nounActs or displays of unfriendliness and antagonism between people or groups.

Hostilities in a sentence

• The treaty called for an immediate end to all hostilities along the border.

• The two departments set aside their hostilities to finish the joint report.

• A fragile ceasefire paused the hostilities for three days.

• Old family hostilities resurfaced at the reading of the will.

Where does hostilities come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin noun hostis, which originally meant simply a stranger or foreigner before it hardened into the sense of a public enemy. From hostis came the adjective hostilis, meaning 'belonging to an enemy' or 'unfriendly', and from that the abstract noun hostilitas, the state of being an enemy. English picked it up through Old French hostilite in the late 1400s, at first to describe enmity in general. By the 1600s the plural 'hostilities' had taken on its now familiar military meaning: the actual acts of armed conflict between warring sides. A useful spelling clue lives in the family: the same hostis root sits inside 'host' in the old sense of an army, so the single 's' and the 't' before the '-ile' both belong to the original Latin shape.

How the word is built

• host- (from Latin hostis: enemy, stranger)
• -ile (adjective: of that kind)
• -ity (noun: state or quality)
• -es (plural)