Hostlers

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who tends to horses, typically responsible for caring for and managing them in a stable or at a transport station
2. someone engaged in the business of providing horse-related services or accommodations
3. an individual tasked with the duties of handling, feeding, and saddling horses in various settings

Etymology: "Hostlers" is simply the plural of "hostler," and the noun itself began life as a word for an innkeeper, not a stableman. It descends from Medieval Latin "hospitalarius," built on "hospitale," meaning "inn," which in turn comes from "hospes," a word that meant both "host" and "guest." Passing through Old French "hostelier," it reached Middle English as "hostiler," and the English word and its variant "ostler" were used for the keeper of an inn for a long time before the horse connection appeared. That shift happened in the second half of the 14th century. As travellers arriving at an inn arrived on horseback, the person responsible for their animals took on the role so strongly that the word narrowed to the stable-keeper who looked after horses, and innkeeping drifted away from it entirely. The word is a doublet of "hosteler" and "hotelier," so these three forms all trace back to the same Latin root, though they took different paths into English and French.

Synonyms: grooms, stable hands