guest - O.E. gæst, giest (Anglian gest) "guest, enemy," the common notion being "stranger," from P.Gmc. *gastiz (cf. O.Fris. jest, Du. gast, Ger. Gast, Goth. gasts), from PIE base *ghostis "strange" (cf. O.C.S. gosti "guest, friend"), also preserved in L. hostis "stranger, enemy," and hospes "host," from hosti-potis "host, guest," originally "lord of strangers." Spelling evolution infl. by O.N. gestr (the usual sound changes from the O.E. word would have yielded Mod.Eng. *yest). Phrase be my guest in the sense of "go right ahead" first recorded 1955.
So, a guest was originally unwelcomed, to say the least.
And in Chinese as well, the word for ‘guest’, ‘ke’ has a meaning of "an intruder".
Cf. "cike" in Chinese means ‘assassin’, lit. stabbing guest.
norio
reflections on the "Welcome, guest" of the Agora panel.
"Gast" is Dutch voor "guest", but in colloquial language or slang, it can mean all kinds of things, ranging from "a bloke" to "a boyfriend" ("mijne gast") or "an eccentric" ("Wa ne gast!") or "a dirty old man" ("ne vieze gast") etc.
Gast in Swedish means both "seaman/sailor" and "ghost/spirit" while having främmande, meaning "strangers" = having guests.
Certainly a very confusing word suggested.
The link between "guests" and "strangers" seems pretty obvious to me. Logically, guests can only be strangers. More interesting is the link between "strangers"/"guests" and "enemies", which is unfortunately still very up-to-date in this day and age.
[quote author=Spiff link=board=wordsuggest;num=1066795140;start=0#7 date=10/27/03 at 04:41:02]The link between "guests" and "strangers" seems pretty obvious to me. Logically, guests can only be strangers. More interesting is the link between "strangers"/"guests" and "enemies", which is unfortunately still very up-to-date in this day and age.
Not necessarily guests are strangers.
The best proof is your own language, Spiff: there’s a different word in Dutch for stranger, "vreemde", if I’m not mistaken.
The link between "guests" and "enemies" is not at all clear in Hebrew, Russian and probably other languages.
[quote author=norio link=board=wordsuggest;num=1066795140;start=0#8 date=10/27/03 at 04:56:28]
Not necessarily guests are strangers.
The best proof is your own language, Spiff: there’s a different word in Dutch for stranger, "vreemde", if I’m not mistaken.
The link between "guests" and "enemies" is not at all clear in Hebrew, Russian and probably other languages.
norio
That would be ‘vreemdeling’.
I didn’t mean to say there necessarily has to be a direct link in the language. I just meant that if someone is a guest, in whatever meaning, he must obviously come from somewhere else and is therefore a stranger as well. That this would automatically make him an enemy, seems much less logical to me, but unfortunately there are still many people all over the world who think that way. (This seems to be the sort of reasoning that brought about the confusion in e.g. Latin, which started this thread.)
[quote author=Iterman link=board=wordsuggest;num=1066795140;start=0#6 date=10/27/03 at 04:35:33]Gast in Swedish means both "seaman/sailor" and "ghost/spirit" while having främmande, meaning "strangers" = having guests.
But there is another Swedish word, «gäst», which seems more directly related to English «guest» (even though, as SAOB informs us, there seems to be a connexion between «gäst» and «gast» as well)....
[quote author=Iterman link=board=wordsuggest;num=1066795140;start=0#6 date=10/27/03 at 04:35:33]Gast in Swedish means both "seaman/sailor" and "ghost/spirit"
It seems that ‘guest’ and ‘ghost’ have different origin
ghost - O.E. gast "soul, spirit, life, breath," from P.Gmc. *ghoizdoz (cf. O.Fris. jest, M.Du. gheest, Ger. Geist "spirit, ghost"), from PIE base *ghois- "to be excited, frightened" (cf. Skt. hedah "wrath," Avestan zaesha- "horrible," Goth. usgaisjan "to frighten"). It seems the primary sense of the W.Gmc. word originally was "to wound, tear, pull to pieces." The gh- spelling appeared c.1425 in Caxton, influenced by Flem. and M.Du. gheest, but was rare in Eng. before c.1550. Original sense in Holy Ghost. Modern sense of "disembodied spirit of a dead person" is c.1385. Sense of "slight suggestion" (in ghost image, ghost of a chance, etc.) is first recorded 1613; that in ghost writing is from 1884, but that term is not found until 1927. Ghost town is from 1931. Ghost in the machine was Gilbert Ryle’s term (1949) for "the mind viewed as separate from the body."
