hostageship
hostageship noun: a condition of being held as surety for a pledge, as to appear before a magistrate for trial after release from gaol.
Noun
hostageship (countable and uncountable, plural hostageships)
- A condition of being held as surety for a pledge, as to appear before a magistrate for trial after release from gaol.
- English, Norman and French tradition seem all to point to an ancient and extremely rigorous form of suretyship or hostageship which would have rendered the surety liable to suffer the punishment that was hanging over the head of the released prisoner.1898, Sir Frederick Pollock, Frederic William Maitland, The history of English law before the time of Edward I, 2nd edition, volume 2, The University Press
Forms of hostageship
| plural | hostageships |
|---|
Origin of hostageship
From hostage + -ship.
Questions about hostageship
- What does hostageship mean?
- Hostageship means a condition of being held as surety for a pledge, as to appear before a magistrate for trial after release from gaol.
- What part of speech is hostageship?
- Hostageship is a noun.
- What is the plural of hostageship?
- The plural of hostageship is hostageships.
Words near hostageship in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hostageship (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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Cite this entry: “hostageship.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hostageship. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.