What's the difference between hostage and prisoner?

Hostage


Definition:

  • (n.) A person given as a pledge or security for the performance of the conditions of a treaty or stipulations of any kind, on the performance of which the person is to be released.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Photograph: Jared Malsin for The Guardian They are among at least seven Egyptians – six Christians and one Muslim – who are believed to be held hostage in Libya, though that is regarded as a conservative estimate.
  • (2) Several former hostages, now safely in Europe, say he had spent the past year true to the creed of his new faith.
  • (3) Isis recently threatened to kill American hostages to avenge the crushing airstrikes in Iraq against militants advancing on Mount Sinjar and the Kurdish capital of Irbil.
  • (4) The US and Iran have had no diplomatic relations since 1979, when a group of student protesters seized the US embassy in Tehran and took US officials hostage.
  • (5) Played out against the backdrop of the 1979 hostage crisis, Argo spins the account of a joint Hollywood-CIA mission to spring six imperiled Americans from revolutionary Iran, using a fake movie production as a decoy.
  • (6) Blindfolding the American hostages, Asgharzadeh later admitted, was their first mistake – it immediately turned an occupying campaign into what looked like deliberate kidnapping.
  • (7) It established a pattern that would hold for the next five years: to call the effort irresponsible, but then – sometimes after giving an actual veto – to sign the bill rather than inviting the obvious attacks that he was holding US troops hostage to his Guantánamo closure pledge.
  • (8) Zawahiri said: "I tell the captive soldiers of al-Qaida and the Taliban and our female prisoners held in the prisons of the crusaders and their collaborators, we have not forgotten you and in order to free you we have taken hostage the Jewish American Warren Weinstein."
  • (9) At least two of them have been hostages of Isis whom the US did not mean to kill.
  • (10) But even more than the state’s failure to rescue the 21 hostages, who were believed to have been taken in separate incidents during December and January, Egyptians are criticising Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi for ordering airstrikes on purported Isis hideouts in Libya without a clear plan to evacuate Egyptians living in the country.
  • (11) The $400m was an arms payment by Iran’s pro-western government in the late 1970s – weapons never delivered when revolution overthrew that government and took Americans hostage in Tehran.
  • (12) You don’t know at night who is going to be coming in the window.” Until now, US ground forces have largely been restricted to a “training and support” mission for the Iraqi army and a handful of one-off special forces raids to free hostages.
  • (13) "They had taken some Iranian and Pakistani hostages so we had to separate them from the pirate suspects," said Lieutenant Commander Claus Krum, a veteran of five piracy missions.
  • (14) At Gölcük naval base, a frigate was reportedly taken over by an unidentified anti-government group and the head of the Turkish fleet was held hostage, a Greek military source told Reuters.
  • (15) Sydney siege inquest: hostage pleaded with police to storm Lindt cafe urgently Read more They had taken cover after the final group to escape the siege had successfully fled in the early hours of 16 December 2014.
  • (16) The mood did not improve in 1980 when Iran's London embassy was taken over by Iraqi-backed gunmen before the siege was dramatically ended by the SAS hostage rescue.
  • (17) The only reason they are here is because they are Ukrainian army soldiers,” he said, gesturing at the rooms with the hostages in.
  • (18) They fit with his continuation of the regime’s systemic human rights abuses, its pitiless prison labour camp system including enslavement, forced abortions and systemic rape, its abductions and foreign hostage-taking, and its aggressive defiance of its neighbours.
  • (19) So they'll free a few hostages, but continue siege?
  • (20) Or the story about how Rich was en route from Switzerland to Finland and had to order his jet to reverse course at 20,000ft to avoid being arrested by the FBI at Helsinki airport; or the secret tunnel he built between the 'Dallas building' and the Glashof restaurant opposite so he could slip out to lunch without fear of being assassinated; or the time he was held hostage in Azerbaijan while his captors considered whether or not to sell him to the Russians (who were allegedly pissed off with Rich for nicking their reserves of gold and other precious metals), or the rumours that Rich had slipped in and out of Britain and the US on numerous occasions under false passports.

Prisoner


Definition:

  • (n.) One who is confined in a prison.
  • (n.) A person under arrest, or in custody, whether in prison or not; a person held in involuntary restraint; a captive; as, a prisoner at the bar of a court.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Ryzhkov added: "I believe they want to keep him in prison for another three or four years at least, so he is not released until well after the next presidential elections in 2012."
  • (2) Faisal Abu Shahla, a senior official in Fatah, an organisation responsible for a good deal of repression of its own when it was in power, accuses Hamas of holding 700 political prisoners in Gaza as part of a broad campaign to suppress dissent.
  • (3) The data indicate greater legitimacy and openness in discussing holocaust-related issues in the homes of ex-partisans than in the homes of ex-prisoners in concentration camps.
  • (4) Mendl's candy colours contrast sharply with the gothic garb of our hero's enemies and the greys of the prison uniforms – as well as scenes showing the hotel later, in the 1960s, its opulence lost beneath a drab communist refurb.
  • (5) This is Selim’s second time in prison,” says Suleiman.
  • (6) We believe our proposal will save taxpayers about £4m and reduce by about 11,000 the number of legally aided cases brought by prisoners each year.
  • (7) Thirteen per cent were in prison and 12% were resident in a therapeutic community.
  • (8) Oscar Pistorius ‘to be released in August’ as appeal date is set for November Read more But the parole board at his prison overruled an emotional plea from the 29-year-old victim’s parents when it sat last week.
  • (9) In an exceptionally rare turn, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, a panel appointed by the governor that is almost always hardline on executions, recommended that his death sentence be commuted to life in prison because of his mental illness.
  • (10) Terry Waite Chair, Benedict Birnberg Deputy chair, Antonio Ferrara CEO The Prisons Video Trust • If I want to build a bridge, I call in a firm of civil engineers who specialise in bridge-building.
  • (11) Local and international media and watchdog organisations such as the World Association of Newspapers , Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders have issued statements strongly condemning the prison sentence.
  • (12) As long as Israel refuses to cease settlement activities and to the release of the fourth group of Palestinian prisoners in accordance with our agreements, they leave us no choice but to insist that we will not remain the only ones committed to the implementation of these agreements, while Israel continuously violates them,” Abbas said.
  • (13) A lfred Ekpenyong knows first hand how tough it can be to find a secure foothold in mainstream society after leaving prison.
  • (14) Aitken was subsequently declared bankrupt and went to prison.
  • (15) This week they are wrestling with the difficult issue of how prisoners can order clothes for themselves now that clothing companies are discontinuing their printed catalogues and moving online.
  • (16) Espinosa wrote that time has now come, with 15 of his group of prisoners having been released, six executed, and American humanitarian worker Kayla Mueller killed in a bombing of Isis positions last month.
  • (17) A 76-year-old British national has been held in an Iranian jail for more than four years and convicted of spying, his family has revealed, as they seek to draw attention to the plight of a man they describe as one of the “oldest and loneliest prisoners in Iran”.
  • (18) In the end, prisons are all about wasting human life and will always be places that take things away.
  • (19) Jails and prison populations are unique in the incidence of deliberate self-harm, but the phenomenon is not well understood.
  • (20) Anthony Ray Hinton, 58, was released on Friday from an Alabama prison.