Other forms: hostilities
Hostility is open unfriendliness, one step short of a fight. Open hostility, met with hostility, hostility towards outsiders.
It is shown rather than felt privately, which is what separates it from dislike. In the plural, hostilities means fighting itself — the cessation of hostilities is the formal phrase for a war stopping. The Latin hostis means an enemy.
1nounhostilityOpen unfriendliness.
“The new manager was met with open hostility from the staff.”
hostility is an unfriendliness.
Latin hostilitas comes from hostis, an enemy or stranger. Host, meaning an army, is the same root.
Latin
hostīlitās
Old French
hostilité
Middle English
hostilitie
English, today
hostility
From Middle English hostilitie, hostilite, from Old French hostilité, from Latin hostīlitās. by surface analysis, hostile + -ity.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA