Harboring

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Giving shelter or refuge to someone or something ; holding secret thoughts or feelings in the mind ; hiding or concealing a person or item from others
2. Offering a safe place for someone ; mentally maintaining secret beliefs or emotions ; aiding by hiding a person or object from discovery
3. Providing protection or a safe haven ; privately keeping feelings or thoughts hidden ; deliberately sheltering a person or thing to avoid detection

Etymology: The verb "harbor" looks like it has something to do with ships, but its oldest sense was military. Its ancestor in Old English, "herebeorg," combined "here," meaning army or host, with "beorg," meaning protection or refuge, so the original idea was a place where an army could find shelter and quarters. Only later did the word attach itself to a safe anchorage for boats, and the sense of sheltering people came along with the shelter idea rather than the sea. The ending took its present shape by analogy with a common French-influenced suffix, the "-our" found in "honour" and "labour," which is why the American spelling and the British spelling end differently in ways that reflect this later change. The verb, meaning to take up lodging or to give refuge, comes from the Old English "herebeorgian," which was built directly on the same noun. Harbor is also a doublet of "albergo" and "auberge," both of which trace back to the same Germanic root and passed into Italian and French, where they came to mean an inn or a lodging.

Synonyms: sheltering, protecting, holding, keeping, nurturing

Antonyms: exposing, abandoning, rejecting, dispersing, divesting