guest.
A recipient of hospitality, especially someone staying by invitation at the house of another.
Meaning & usage
A recipient of hospitality, especially someone staying by invitation at the house of another.
The guests were let in by the butler.
A patron or customer in a hotel etc.
Guests must vacate their rooms by 10 o'clock on their day of departure.
An invited visitor or performer to an institution or to a broadcast.
special guest
The guest for the broadcast was a leading footballer.
A user given temporary access to a system despite not having an account of their own.
Any insect that lives in the nest of another without compulsion and usually not as a parasite.
An inquiline.
Where this word comes from
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”)
To appear as a guest, especially on a broadcast.
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).
To receive or entertain hospitably.
Where this word comes from
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”)
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.