We explain what hostile people, actions or environments are. Also, some synonyms and antonyms of the term.
What is a hostile person?
A hostile person is one who demonstrates your enmity, dislike, or violent opposition toward another person, a cause, or an idea . This adjective is also used to refer to the actions, words and gestures of said person.
The words “hostile” and “hostility” come from Latin hostilisderived in turn from hostis (“enemy”, in a legal or war context). The ancient Romans called hostis to their foreign military rivals, from whom they expected hatred and rivalry. As time went by, this word came to mean those attitudes typical of a war enemy. From this same origin comes, for example, the word hosts (which means “enemy army”).
The exact sense in which someone or something is hostile can be very varied: insults, threats and physical aggression are unequivocal signs of hostility, but it is also possible to be hostile to someone by being aggressive in speech or showing bad manners. In this sense, “hostile” should be understood as the antonym of “friendly” or “cordial.”
Likewise, it is possible to mark hostile to an environment or atmosphere, when in some way enmity, discomfort or latent violence is perceived. Therefore, when we talk about a “hostile work environment,” it refers to a job in which there is a continuous air of threat, rivalry or violence. Similarly, one can speak of a “hostile environment” in other fields of knowledge, such as biology to refer to an environment that lacks the resources and conditions to be benevolent: “the desert is a hostile territory for life of any kind.”
Finally, the word “hostility” should be understood as a synonym for “enmity”, “rivalry”, “aggressiveness” or “uncomfortability”, and as an antonym for “friendship”, “mildness”, “civility”, “cordiality” and “ kindness”.
References
- “Hostile” in the Language Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy.
- “Hostility” in the Language Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy.
- “Etymology of Hostile” in the Online Spanish Etymological Dictionary.
- “Hostile” in Wiktionary.
