Today's podictionary word is hostage . The roots of the word hostage go back to Latin.
But in Latin the word for hostage was obsidem, which is also related to our word obsessed which originally meant controlled by an evil spirit from the Latin obsidere, surrounded in a hostile way.
When hostage first appeared in Old French from where we got it, it, like the Latin, didn't have an H in front of it. In those days a hostage wasn't someone taken in a terrorist attack. Instead, powerful men gave their subordinates and often family members in hostage to someone with whom they had made a deal.
When the conditions of the deal were fulfilled—say, move your troops or get another noble to do something, the hostages were released. In the mean time the hostages were still important people and had to be treated as befit their station in life. This caused the Old French ostage with no H to become hostage with an H , as people associated the word with words related to hospitality related to keeping a guest and all with an H .
This is strange since if you know anyone who's mother tongue is French, they have a hard time pronouncing H . As if to prove my point the modern French word for hostage is otage, they dropped both the H and the S .
