HOSTIS · OST · OASTE
When did the enemy start fighting for us?
Our army begins with the enemy. Latin hostis meant first “stranger”, then “enemy”; in Late Latin the same word comes to name the armed force as well. Romanian inherits oaste from this root, and the same branch leaves ost, oste, hueste, hoste and military English host in other languages. We cannot date the day the enemy changed sides. But we can track the desertion through texts.
- 2 sides
- hostis the enemy vs oaste, our army
- 1550–1580
- “multe oști birui” — the oldest dated attestation in the DLR
- 1 bridge
- Șăineanu: “armed enemy → armed man”
The page's machine
The flip, exhibit by exhibit
Seven exhibits, two sides. Tap each piece to see which side of the front it stands on and which dictionary keeps it there. The LA/FR/IT/EN/RO tags name the language.
hostis classical Latin LA
L&S: “a stranger, foreigner; afterwards transf., an enemy” — plus Cicero: hostis was once what we now call peregrinus.
hospes the guest branch LA
L&S: “He who entertains a stranger, a host”. The old analysis says hostis + pasco; the modern reconstruction says *hosti-potis, roughly “master of the guest” (de Vaan). The father of hôte — on a different branch from ost.
HOSTIS sixth-century Latin LA
Lex Salica LXIII: “in hoste” — killed while with the host, on campaign. Gregory of Tours II.32: “hostem redire jubet ad propria” — he sends his host home. The collective military sense, already a fact.
ost Old French FR
“Du latin hostis… (Militaire) Armée, corps de troupe” (Godefroy, TLFi). Alexis, 11th c.: “l'oust”; Roland, l. 18: “Jo nen ai ost…”. (dictionary)
oste Italian IT
Treccani: “[lat. hŏstis “nemico”]… esercito nemico, o anche semplicem. esercito” — first the enemy, then the army. The innkeeper is the other oste: the one from hospes.
host English EN
Etymonline: “an army organized for war, mid-13c., from Old French ost” — from PIE *ghos-ti-. Lord of Hosts, the heavenly host.
oaste Romanian RO
DEX '09: “– Lat. hostis, -em „dușman”” — (Înv. și pop.) Armată. Plural oști. The desertion is complete.
Hôte does not belong to the military branch: it comes straight from hospes, not from hostis “enemy”. But the fence is not absolute: hospes is standardly reconstructed from *hosti-potis, from the same ancient family of the stranger. In that one old family, the stranger became guest, enemy, and army.
The word at home
At home: labels, relatives, chronicles
Once inherited into Romanian, oaste developed a thoroughly Romanian life of its own: feminine, with an -i plural, a regiment of derivatives — and two chroniclers with three quotations.
Labels: (Înv. și pop.)
Sense 1: (Înv. și pop.) Armată (“army”, archaic and folk); sense 2: (Înv.) Război, luptă (“war, battle”, archaic). Oaste belongs to chronicles and villages, not to barracks. (DEX)
Stress and plural: oáste, oști
oáste, stressed on the first syllable (Scriban); plural oști, genitive-dative oștii (DOOM 3). Regional plural forms oaste, oște; variants oastă, oáște. (DLR)
Derivatives: a regiment
DER: ostaș, oștire, oștean, oști (a verb!), oștitor, oștitură… — from soldier to order of battle. (DER)
Chroniclers: Ureche and Neculce
Ureche: “au purces craiul cu oastea pănă la Liov” (“the king set out with the host as far as Lviv”). Neculce: “cu oastea turcească” (“with the Turkish host”) and “la oaste, la viziriul” (“to the host, to the vizier”). (Wikisource)
One root, two branches
The family: ost is a cousin, not a father
From Spain to England, the same hostis produced parallel hosts — while the guest minded its own branch.
The military branch: six cousins
oaste, ost, oste, hueste, hoste, host — each straight from Latin hostis “enemy” (DER). No French waystation stands between hostis and oaste.
The Iberians: hueste, hoste
Du Cange: “Hispanis Hueste” — Spanish made its own host from the same hostis. Portuguese hoste keeps the Latin h. (Du Cange; DER)
The guest branch: hospes
From *hosti-potis, roughly “master of the guest” (de Vaan): Latin hospes gives French hôte, Italian oste “innkeeper” (Treccani), English host “the one who receives” (Etymonline). The same old family, a different branch.
Guest, the English twin
Wiktionary: host “Doublet of guest” — the guest and the English host are brothers from PIE *gʰóstis. The fed stranger against the armed stranger. (dictionary)
The tree, in brief
HOSTIS / HOSTEM (Latin) — “stranger” → “enemy” → (Late Latin) “armed force”
oaste (Romanian) — straight from hostem (DER)
ost (Old French) → host (English) — “army”, 11th c. → 13th c.
oste (Italian) — “army” (Treccani)
hueste (Spanish) — (Du Cange; DER)
hoste (Portuguese) — (DER)
HOSPES (Latin) — from *hosti-potis, roughly “master of the guest” (de Vaan)
hôte (French) → host (English) — “the one who receives”
oste (Italian) — “innkeeper” (Treccani)
From Lat. HOSTIS / HOSTEM spring several parallel Romance branches. None of the forms below passes through another.
The evidence on the table
The case file: five witnesses
From DEX to Gregory of Tours and Etymonline: five witnesses, each seeing one stretch of the flight.
DEX '09
“OASTE, oști, s. f. … – Lat. hostis, -em „dușman”.”
The Explanatory Dictionary, s.v. oaste
The Romanian gate: from Latin, with “enemy” printed beside it. In '98 sense 1 read “(Rar) Oșteni, soldați”; in '09 it reads “Oștire”.
Gregory of Tours
“…hostem redire jubet ad propria.”
Historiae II.32 (Migne PL 71); second half of the 6th century
The king sends his own host home: hostem in the singular, with collective military sense. The desertion is already complete.
Du Cange
“2. HOSTIS, Exercitus, castra, expeditio bellica… Sed et feminino interdum genere usurpatur.”
Glossarium, Niort 1883–87, vol. 4
The flip on record: host, camp, expedition — and the feminine gender, as in Romanian.
DER
“Lat. hostem … cf. it. oste, prov., v. fr. ost, sp. hueste, port. hoste.”
Ciorănescu, DER, s.v. oaste
The Romance family lines up here: Italian, Provençal, Old French, Spanish, Portuguese.
Etymonline
“an army organized for war, mid-13c., from Old French ost, host “army” (10c.), from Medieval Latin hostis…”
Etymonline, s.v. host
The dated English link: the 13th century, from French ost, from medieval hostis.
Where we stand
What we know and what we reconstruct
Every claim with its own label: what is solid, what is datable, what is reconstructed, what stays open.
Solid: the derivation
oaste from Latin hostis/hostem (DEX, DER); the collective military sense in sixth-century Latin (Lex Salica, Gregory of Tours); the ost/oste/hueste/hoste/host cousins on the same root.
Datable: the witnesses
each with its own date: c. 500 (Lex Salica), 6th c. (Gregory of Tours), 11th c. (ost), 13th c. (host), 1550–1580 (oști).
Reconstructed: the root
PIE *gʰóstis “stranger, guest” and *hosti-potis “master of the guest” (de Vaan) — reconstructions, not texts.
Unknown: the instant and the replacement
the exact moment of the broadening; the replacement of oaste by armată (not pursued here).
When it happened
Timeline of the desertion
Not the day of the desertion, but its neighbourhood: three datable stops.
Lex Salica
c. 500
Title LXIII: “in hoste” / “in oste” — killed while with the host, i.e. on campaign. The collective military sense, in a code from around 500 (the old A-recension, usually dated c. 507–511).
stop 1 of 3
Alexis
11th c.
Laisse XXIX: “…com s'ost l'oust predede” — the chamber destroyed “as if the host had taken it as spoil”. The first datable French ost (G. Paris; Hildesheim ms.).
stop 2 of 3
Sisin
1550–80
DLR: “Sisin… multe oști birui (a. 1550–1580)” — the oldest dated Romanian use: a range, not a year.
stop 3 of 3
44 BC Cicero · 6th c. Gregory of Tours · c. 1100 Roland, l. 18 · c. 1250 host · 1645 Herodotus (translation) · 1883–87 Du Cange · 1958–66 DER · 1998 DEX '98 · 2009 DEX '09 · 2021 DOOM 3.
Where shots are still fired
What stays unknown
The chain is solid — the details are not. Three question marks, each with its own label.
When exactly did it desert? UNDATED
We know the neighbourhood, not the day: “in hoste” (c. 500) and Gregory of Tours (6th c.) show the change already under way. Between Cicero (“the public enemy”) and Lex Salica stretch five witness-less centuries.
Which road did the sense take? HYPOTHESIS
Șăineanu: armed enemy → armed man (collective). The standard account: enemy → enemy troop → army. Two compatible formulations; no text decides between them.
Who replaced it: armata? NOT PURSUED HERE
Oaste carries the (Înv. și pop.) label; armata does the duty today. This page does not follow the replacement story.
What is NOT disputed: oaste from hostis, the collective military sense in Late Latin, the ost/oste/hueste/hoste/host cousins — every source agrees on those.
Test yourself
Which is older?
Six landmarks from the word's history, shuffled. Put them from oldest to newest.
Move each card to its position, 1 to 6. Keys 1–6 move the chosen card; cards drag with a finger too.
- c. 1250
host: the host enters English
Position - ~44 BC
Cicero: hostis, once “the stranger”
Position - 1550–80
Sisin: “multe oști birui”
Position - c. 500
Lex Salica: “in hoste”, with the host
Position - 1645
Herodotus: oastea (translation)
Position - 11th c.
Alexis: “l'oust”, the plundering host
Position
Score: 0 of 6
The right order, oldest first:
- ~44 BC — Cicero: hostis, once “the stranger”
- c. 500 — Lex Salica: “in hoste”, with the host
- 11th c. — Alexis: “l'oust”, the plundering host
- c. 1250 — host: the host enters English
- 1550–80 — Sisin: “multe oști birui”
- 1645 — Herodotus: oastea (translation)
The settled row: every landmark in its place.
Sources
Latin first, then Romanian, then the cousins; neighbours last. Every risky claim points at its source.
Latin
- L&S: hostis, stranger → enemy (dictionary)
- L&S: hospes, old lexicography (dictionary)
- hospes from *hosti-potis, after de Vaan (dictionary)
- Du Cange: HOSTIS = exercitus (dictionary)
- Lex Salica LXIII: “in hoste” (text)
- Hessels & Kern, Lex Salica (1880 edition)
- Gregory of Tours, Historiae II.32 (text)
Romanian
- DEX '09: “Lat. hostis, -em” (dictionary)
- DER: Lat. hostem + the cousins (dictionary)
- Ureche: “cu oastea pănă la Liov” (text)
- Neculce I: “oastea turcească” (text)
- Neculce II: “la oaste” (text)
Cousins
- ost from hostis (dictionary)
- CNRTL/TLFi: ost (dictionary)
- Alexis, laisse XXIX: “l'oust” (text)
- Roland, l. 18: “Jo nen ai ost” (text)
- Treccani: oste², the army (dictionary)
- Treccani: oste¹, the innkeeper (dictionary)
- Littré: “sens d'armée dans les lois barbares” (dictionary)
- host, mid-13c. (dictionary)
- host = guest doublet (dictionary)
- hôte from hospes (dictionary)
Catalogue neighbours
- articolul-de-la-coada: the tail machine
- verbul-a-fi: the melt machine
- dusmanul-gand-rau: the word autopsy
- gagiu: the two-dock trial
- bogatul: the Slavic scales
Type: Fraunces and Source Serif 4, under the SIL Open Font Licence.