Hospitality is about people welcoming other people into their homes or other places where they work or spend their time. People who welcome visitors are called hosts. The people they welcome are called guests.
The word hospitality comes from the Latin hospes, which came from the word hostis, which originally meant "to have power."
Hospitality is all about the art of entertaining or receiving guests. We talk about "offering hospitality". There are many different ideas about how to offer hospitality according to the various cultures in the world. In the past, many societies taught that it was always right to offer hospitality to strangers who came to their door in need of food or shelter. This may seem a strange idea to many of us today, but it was an important way to survive in many societies, especially in lands where people travelled long distances, often far away from large towns.
- C. Lewis, Elementary Latin Dictionary (Oxford Univ. Press, 2000), p. 371.