Word.ws English Dictionary

guest

/ɡɛst/

guest noun: a recipient of hospitality, especially someone staying by invitation at the house of another.

Noun

guest (plural guests)

  1. A recipient of hospitality, especially someone staying by invitation at the house of another.
    • The guests were let in by the butler.
    • We expressed our readiness, and in ten minutes were in the station wagon, rolling rapidly down the long drive, for it was then after nine. We passed on the way the van of the guests from Asquith.1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter V, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC
  2. A patron or customer in a hotel etc.
    • Guests must vacate their rooms by 10 o'clock on their day of departure.
  3. An invited visitor or performer to an institution or to a broadcast.
    • special guest
    • The guest for the broadcast was a leading footballer.
  4. A user given temporary access to a system despite not having an account of their own.
  5. Any insect that lives in the nest of another without compulsion and usually not as a parasite.
  6. An inquiline.

Verb

guest (third-person singular simple present guests, present participle guesting, simple past and past participle guested)

  1. (intransitive) To appear as a guest, especially on a broadcast.
    • During the '60s, he guested as off-beat characters on TV shows like "The Asphalt Jungle," "Bus Stop," and "The Detectives."1990, Wayne Jancik, The Billboard Book of One-Hit Wonders, →ISBN, page 254
    • Jimmy Fallon’s Trump impression struggled to match up to the real thing when Trump guested on his show.2016 May 23, David Sims, “Where 'Saturday Night Live' Failed This Season”, in The Atlantic, retrieved 12 Dec 2025
  2. (intransitive) As a musician: to play as a guest, providing an instrument that a band/orchestra does not normally have in its line up (for instance, percussion in a string band).
    • Oldest son Trey, from Will's first marriage, paved the way for his sibling's stardom when he guested on his dad's hit rap album, Big Willie Style, lending some precocious dialogue to the beginning of "Just the Two of Us" and starring in the accompanying music video:2010 September 9, Kevin Fallon, “Will Smith's 9-Year-Old Daughter Gets Record Deal”, in The Atlantic, retrieved 12 Dec 2025
  3. (obsolete, transitive) To receive or entertain hospitably.
    • Two Angels sent Two Heav'nly Scowts the Lord to Sodom sent ; downe , received and guested1608, [Guillaume de Salluste] Du Bartas, translated by Josuah Sylvester, Du Bartas His Deuine Weekes and Workes […], 3rd edition, London: […] Humfrey Lownes [and are to be sold by Arthur Iohnson...

Proper noun capitalized: Guest

Guest

  1. A surname.
    • The vote was 213-209 along party lines. Republican members of the House Ethics Committee – Michael Guest of Mississippi, Dave Joyce of Ohio, Andrew Garbarino of New York, John Rutherford of Florida and Michelle Fischbach of Minnesota – voted present. GOP Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado also voted present...2023 June 21, Haley Talbot and Kristin Wilson, “House votes to censure Democratic congressman who led Trump investigations”, in CNN, archived from the original on 03 Mar 2024
  2. A river in Virginia, United States, a tributary of the Clinch.
  3. An unincorporated community in DeKalb County, Alabama, United States.
  4. A visitor to any of the Disney theme parks

guest meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

guest in Hindi

recipient of hospitality
मेहमान mehmān, अतिथि atithi

guest in Tamil

விருந்தினர்

guest in Marathi

recipient of hospitality
पाहुणा pāhuṇā, पाहुणी pāhuṇī

guest in Urdu

recipient of hospitality
مِہْمان mihmān
More languagesFewer languages
guest in Bengali
অতিথি otithi, মেহমান mehman
guest in Telugu
అతిథి atithi
guest in Malayalam
അതിഥി atithi, വിരുന്നുകാരൻ virunnukāraṉ
guest in Kannada
ಅತಿಥಿ atithi
guest in Punjabi
ਅੱਭਯਾਗਤ abbhayāgat, ਪਰਾਹੁਣਾ parāhuṇā
guest in Gujarati
અતિથિ atithi
guest in Sanskrit
अतिथि atithi
guest in Assamese
আলহী alohi
guest in Nepali
पाहुना pāhunā, आगन्तुक āgantuk
guest in Pashto
مېلمه melmá, رابللی rābalálay
guest in Tagalog
bisita
guest in Arabic
ضَيْف ḍayf, زَائِر zāʔir, زَبُون zabūn
guest in Malay
tetamu
guest in Indonesian
tamu
guest in Thai
แขก kɛ̀ɛk, ลูกค้า lûuk-káa
guest in Vietnamese
khách
guest in Myanmar
ဧည့်သည် e-ny.sany, ဧည့် e-ny.
Kashmiri
پۆژھ poċh

Examples of guest in a sentence

  • The early guests sipped their punch and avoided each other's eyes.
  • Guests can be shuttled to and from the hotel for no extra cost.
  • John Richards, RN, was a guest at the inn last night.

All 40 example sentences with guest

Forms of guest

Noun
pluralguests
Verb
third-person singular presentguests
present participleguesting
past participleguested
pastguested

Plural of guest: guests

Origin of guest

From Middle English gest, from Old Norse gestr, which replaced or was merged with Old English ġiest, both from Proto-Germanic *gastiz, from Proto-Indo-European *gʰóstis (“stranger, guest, host, someone with whom one has reciprocal duties of hospitality”). Doublet of host, from Latin. Cognates West-Germanic: :* Bavarian Gåst (“guest”) :* Dutch gast (“guest”) :* German Gast (“guest”) :* Luxembourgish Gaascht (“guest”) :* Vilamovian gost (“guest”) :* Yiddish גאַסט (gast, “guest”) North-Germanic: :* Danish gæst (“guest, visitor”) :* Faroese and Icelandic gestur (“guest”) :* Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk gjest (“guest”) :* Swedish gäst (“guest”) East-Germanic: :* Gothic 𐌲𐌰𐍃𐍄𐍃 (gasts, “guest”)

Words formed from guest

Phrases with guest

8 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with guest

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about guest

What does guest mean?
Guest means a recipient of hospitality, especially someone staying by invitation at the house of another.
What is guest in Hindi?
Guest in Hindi is मेहमान (mehmān), अतिथि (atithi). See Guest meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is guest?
Guest can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce guest?
Guest is pronounced /ɡɛst/.
What is the plural of guest?
The plural of guest is guests.

Words near guest in the dictionary

  1. guesswork
  2. guessworker
  3. guessworkers
  4. guessworks
  5. guessèd
  6. guest
  7. guest beer
  8. guest beers
  9. guest blogger
  10. guest bloggers
  11. guest book

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: guest (page history and authors); Guest (page history and authors); guest (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); അതിഥി (Malayalam) (page history and authors); ಅತಿಥಿ (Kannada) (page history and authors); ਅੱਭਯਾਗਤ (Punjabi) (page history and authors); आगन्तुक (Nepali) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-guest.ogg.

Cite this entry: “guest.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/guest. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.