Hosting: Dinner Guests, Conferences, and Websites
Hosting means receiving guests, holding an event, or keeping a website on a server. The last sense borrowed the metaphor whole.
Hosting is receiving and looking after guests. Computing took the word without changing the idea: a hosting company keeps your website on its machines and serves it to visitors, exactly as a host keeps a house and receives callers. Biology uses the same image for an organism that a parasite lives on.
- Receiving guests. *Hosting a dinner.*
- Holding an event. *The city is hosting the games.*
- Keeping a website on a server. *Web hosting.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Verb | host | They host it yearly. |
| -ing | hosting | Hosting duties. |
| Noun | host | A generous host. |
| Noun | hosting | Cloud hosting. |
| Related | hospitality | The hospitality industry. |
How it is used in a sentence
- They are hosting the family this year.Domestic use.
- The conference is hosted by the university.Hosted by names the organiser.
- The site is hosted in Frankfurt.Where the servers are, which matters for data law.
Kinds of web hosting
- Shared hosting — many sites on one machine, cheapest
- VPS — a virtual private server, your own slice
- Dedicated — a whole physical machine
- Cloud hosting — capacity spread across many machines
- Static hosting — files served directly, no application behind them
From *host*, Old French *hoste*, from Latin *hospes*, guest or host. A separate *host* meaning a large crowd comes from Latin *hostis*, an enemy — the same word behind *hostile*.
Are the two hosts related?
No. The host who receives you comes from *hospes*; the host meaning a multitude comes from *hostis*, enemy, by way of an army.
What does hosted mean for a website?
That the files and any software behind the site live on someone else's servers, which answer requests from visitors.