"H" Word Origins

horseback

Middle English

A straightforward compound of horse and back, first recorded in Middle English.

horsefeathers

Origin

The "nonsense" sense, a euphemism for horseshit, is horse + feathers, a nonexistent item as only birds have feathers. Compare hen’s teeth. The "horse hair" sense notes the similarity of that hair to bird feathers. Regarding the roofing sense, compare feathering strip and horsefeathers.

horseflesh

Origin

From horse + flesh.

horseload

Origin

From horse + load.

horsely

Origin

From Middle English horsly, equivalent to horse + -ly.

horseman

Middle English

From Middle English horsman — simply horse plus man.

horsen

Origin

From Middle English horsen, horsene, equivalent to horse + -en (“of or belonging to”). Cognate with Old High German russīn (“equine, of horses”), whence Middle High German rüssīn, rössīn (“of horses, horsen”).

horseplay

English

From horse plus play. Horse was long used as an intensifier meaning 'large, coarse or rough', as in horseradish and horse laugh.

horsepower

Origin

Coined from horse plus power — engineer James Watt originally defined it by comparing steam engines to the pulling power of a real horse.

horseradish

Origin

From horse plus radish — "horse" here was likely used the way it often is in old plant and animal names, to mean "coarse" or "large," not literally connected to horses.

horseshit

Origin

From horse + shit.

horseshoe

Middle English

A straightforward compound of horse and shoe, going back to Middle English horsscho.

Horsey

Old English

From Old English hors ("horse") plus īeġ ("island").

horst

German

Borrowed from German Horst, meaning "heap" or "ridge."

horsy

Origin

From horse + -y. Cognate with Middle Low German rössich (“horselike, equipped with a horse”).

Hortense

Latin

From the French form of Latin Hortēnsia, ultimately related to hortēnsis ("having to do with gardens").

hortensia

Origin

From the genus name, New Latin Hortensia, from hortēnsius (“of the garden”), from hortēnsis.

Horton

Old English

From Old English horh ("mud, slime") plus tūn ("enclosure, settlement").

Horus

Ancient Greek

From Late Latin Hōrus, from Ancient Greek Ὧρος (Hôros), from Egyptian ḥr.

Horvath

Origin

From Hungarian Horváth, from horvát ("Croatian"). Doublet of Croat.

hosanna

Hebrew

From Greek hōsanná, borrowed from Aramaic and ultimately Hebrew hoshia na, meaning "please save (us)" — originally a plea that became a cry of praise.

hose

Old English

From Old English hosa, "leggings," related to German Hose ("trousers") — the clothing sense came first, and the tube-for-liquid sense followed later by resemblance.

hosebag

Origin

From hose + bag.

hospice

Latin

From French hospice, going back to Latin hospitium, "hospitality" or "a place of lodging" — originally a shelter for travellers and the poor.

hospitable

Latin

From Middle French hospitable, built on the same Latin root as "hospitality" and "host."

hospital

Latin

From Old French hospital, from Latin hospitalis, "hospitable" — the same root gave us "hostel" and "hotel."

hospitality

Latin

From Latin hospitalitas, built from hospes, meaning both "host" and "guest."

hospitalization

Origin

Formed from hospitalize plus the suffix -ation.

Hoss

Origin

A dialectal pronunciation of horse; see also 'oss in English dialects with h-dropping.

host

Latin

From Old French oste, from Latin hospes, which strangely covered both "guest" and "host" — ultimately from a root meaning "stranger."

hostage

Latin

From Old French hostage, likely tracing back either to hoste ("host," via the idea of someone taken into "lodging" turning into captivity) or to a Latin word for "captive."

hostel

Latin

From Old French hostel, from Latin hospitale — a doublet of "hotel" and "hospital," all from the same root meaning "hospitable."

hostelry

Origin

From Middle English hostelerie, from Middle French hostellerie, from Old French hostelerie, ostelerie; by surface analysis, hostel + -ry.

hostess

Old French

From Old French ostesce, formed from oste ("host") with a feminine ending.

hostie

Origin

Borrowed from Middle French hostie, from Latin hostia.

hostile

Latin

From Latin hostilis, "of an enemy," from hostis, "enemy" or "stranger."

hostility

Latin

From Old French hostilité, from Latin hostilitas, built on hostis, "enemy."

hostler

Origin

From Middle English hostiler, from Middle French hostiler, from Old French hostelier, from Medieval Latin hostilārius, hospitālārius, from hospitāle "inn", from hospitālis "hospitable", from hospes "host, guest". Both hostler and its alternative form ostler originally meant simply "innkeeper", and acquired a specific association with horses in the second half of the 14th century. Doublet of hosteler and hotelier.

hot

Old English

From Old English hat, going back to a Germanic root shared with "heat" — one of the oldest and most basic words in the language.

hot wallet

English

From hot in the sense of live or connected, contrasted with cold storage kept offline.

hotbed

Origin

Originally a literal gardening term for a bed of soil heated by rotting manure to help seeds sprout early; the figurative sense of "breeding ground" grew from that image.

hotcake

Origin

From hot + cake.

hotch

Germanic

From Anglo-Norman hocher, ultimately from a Germanic root related to jiggling or shaking.

Hotchkiss

Origin

A variant of Hodgkins, from the given name Roger.

hotdish

Origin

From hot + dish.

hotfoot

Origin

From Middle English hot-fot, hot fot, equivalent to hot + foot.

hothead

Old English

From hot + head, echoing the old idea of anger as a "hot heart" — the same image survives in Old English hātheort, "hot-hearted, furious."

hotheaded

Origin

From hot + headed, the adjective form of hothead.