Dictionary

guest-friendship en · NOUN

Etymology

From guest + friendship. Compare Dutch gastvriendschap, German Gastfreundschaft.

Meanings

1. (uncountable, usually) Friendship shown to guests; hospitality.
   • The great significance of guest friendship and gift-exchange in the Celto-Germanic world bears witness to a deeply-founded desire to enter into positive relations with other groups. 1996, Nico Roymans, From the Sword to the Plough: Three Studies on the Earliest Romanisation of Northern Gaul, Amsterdam University Press, →ISBN, page 13:
   • Professor Victor Alonso stresses the role of xenia as an overarching, transcending form of universally binding law in ancient Greece. He writes that the Greeks employed the institution of xenia, or guest-friendship, as a fundamental instrument and precept of international law. 2012, Robert A. Williams, Jr., Savage Anxieties: The Invention of Western Civilization:
   • Germanic cultural traditions of guest-friendship and hospitality, immortalised in the heroic literature of Beowulf (610ff) (Cat. 2003, 116, 397; von Uslar, 1934: Abb 2, 7-8). 2009, Ángel Morillo Cerdán, Norbert Hanel, Esperanza Martín, International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies 20, Ediciones Polifemo, →ISBN, page 819:

Forms

Relateds

guestfriendly · guestfriendliness