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An army; a number of men gathered for war. A host so great as covered all the field. Dryden.

A plant which aids, shelters, or protects another plant in its growth, as those which are used for nurse crops.

stipulations of any kind, on the performance of which the person is to be released. Your hostages I have, so have you mine; And we shall talk before we fight. Shak. He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune. Bacon.

An inn. [Archaic] Poe. So pass I hostel, hall, and grange. Tennyson.

The keeper of a hostel or inn.

An inn; a lodging house. [Archaic] Chaucer. "Homely brought up in a rude hostelry." B. Jonson. Come with me to the hostelry. Longfellow.

A female host; a woman who hospitably entertains guests at her house. Shak.

The character, personality, or office of a hostess. Shak.

The consecrated wafer; the host. [Obs.] Bp. Burnet.

desire to thwart and injure; occupied by an enemy or enemies; inimical; unfriendly; as, a hostile force; hostile intentions; a hostile country; hostile to a sudden change.

In a hostile manner.

State of being hostile; public or private enemy; unfriendliness; animosity. Hostility being thus suspended with France. Hayward.

To make hostile; to cause to become an enemy. [Obs.] A. Seward.

An encounter; a battle. "Fierce hosting." Milton.

An innkeeper. [Obs.] See Hosteler.

Inhospitable. [Obs.] "A hostless house." Spenser.

A hostelry; an inn or lodging house. [Obs.] Marlowe.

Seamless. [R.]

The spirit; the soul of man. [Obs.] Then gives her grieved ghost thus to lament. Spenser.

the unseen world and the spirits of departed friends. The dance is the chief rite of the Ghost-dance, or Messiah, religion, which originated about 1890 in the doctrines of the Piute Wovoka, the Indian Messiah, who taught that the time was drawing near when the whole Indian race, the dead with the living, should be reun…