Meaning

noun a prisoner who is held by one party to insure that another party will meet specified terms

originFrom Middle English hostage, ostage, from Old French hostage, ostage. This, in turn, is either from Old French hoste (“host”) + -age (in which case the sense development is from taking someone into "lodging" to taking them into "captivity", to applying the term to a captive), or is from Vulgar Latin obsidāticum (“condition of being held captive”), from Latin obses (“hostage, captive”), with the…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0