hueste

Forms

hueste f (plural huestes)^[1] Old Spanish texts write hueste, huest, ueste, uest and vuest, and also hoste and oste.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish ueste, inherited from Latin hostis (“stranger; enemy”).^[3][4][5][1] In Latin the word meant an enemy, especially one at war;^[3][4] Vulgar Latin used it collectively for the enemy army and then for any army, a sense frequent from the early 6th century (Egeria, Avitus).^[3][4] In this sense it became feminine almost everywhere.^[3] The same word is Portuguese hoste, Catalan host, Old French ost, Italian oste and Romanian oaste.^[6][1][7]

The Latin noun first meant “stranger, foreigner”, as Varro explains.^[8][1] It goes back to Proto-Indo-European *gʰóstis (“guest, stranger”), the source also of Gothic 𐌲𐌰𐍃𐍄𐍃 (gasts), Old High German gast and Proto-Germanic *gastiz.^[9][1] The further origin is disputed: de Vaan reviews three proposals, a root “to eat”, a compound “standing apart” and a root “to take, give in exchange”.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas's first record is ueste in the Cantar de mio Cid.^[3][4] The Liber regum (c. 1194–1211, in an early 13th-century copy) tells how death fell en la huest de Senacherib “on the army of Sennacherib”, and the Fuero de Zorita speaks of the town council que yxiere en hueste “that goes out on campaign”.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Hueste was the general word for an army throughout the Middle Ages, and could also mean the camp where an army lay.^[3] By the 16th century it was old-fashioned: Juan de Valdés said it survived only in a proverb.^[3] Covarrubias called it old Castilian for an army in the field, used in the Partidas and the Conde Lucanor.^[11] The Diccionario de Autoridades also marked it as antiquated, but noted its use in the plural for troops.^[12] The modern figurative sense is the followers of a person or a cause.^[5][13]

The phrase huest antigua “the old enemy”, a name of the devil, was also applied to a host of demons or damned souls, and became estantigua “phantom”.^[14][6] The learned derivatives hostil, hostilidad and hostilizar come from Latin hostīlis.^[4]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – ueste in the Cantar de mio Cid.^[3][4]
• c. 1194–1211 – the Liber regum has huest.^[10]
• 1218–1250 – the Fuero de Zorita has hueste “military campaign”.^[10]
• 1220–1250 – huest antigua is used for the devil.^[14]
• c. 1490 – estantigua “phantom” is recorded.^[14]
• 1492 – Nebrija translates Latin exercitus as ueste de gentes.^[15][3]
• 1515 – first record from the Americas, in Tierra Firme.^[16]
• 1611 – Covarrubias calls it old Castilian.^[11]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology Latin hostis.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. (often in the plural) An army in the field; troops: Las huestes del conde cruzaron el río al amanecer.^[5][1][13]
2. (often in the plural) The followers or supporters of a person or cause.^[5][1]

Related words

• hostil
• estantigua
• Latin hostis
• Catalan host

Usage notes

A separate hueste of Honduras is an adjective meaning “finely ground”, said especially of maize dough beaten and ready for tortillas.^[5][18] It is a borrowing from Classical Nahuatl cuēchtic (“very crushed, ground”), and Membreño recorded it in 1907 with the verb huestear “to grind fine”.^[5][1][19]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. hueste
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 421
4. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hueste
5. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. hueste
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 4, 821
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. hueste
11. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1001
12. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro
13. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. hueste
14. ^ a b c Segura Munguía, Santiago (2014), Lexicón etimológico y semántico del latín y de las voces actuales que proceden de raíces latinas o griegas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 322
15. ^ Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. hueste
16. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. hueste
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 579
18. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. hueste
19. ^ Membreño, Alberto (1907), Aztequismos de Honduras, México: Imprenta de Müller Hermanos, p. 19