dHôte

Dhôte is not a standard lexical item in French or other major languages. In standard French, the noun meaning host or guest is hôte, spelled with a circumflex on the o. The sequence d'hôte or d’Hôte appears in phrases meaning “of the host” (for example, la nourriture d'hôte means the host’s food). The form dhôte is usually the result of typographic error, OCR misreads, or stylized branding, and is not used in formal writing.

Etymology and usage context

The correct term hôte comes from Old French hôte, itself from Latin hospes, hosp- meaning guest or host. In everyday French, hôte denotes a person who receives guests (hospitality), or, in biology and medicine, the organism that harbors a parasite or pathogen. In information technology, the French translation of host is hôte; dhôte would be considered incorrect in technical texts, which prefer hôte or the English term host.

Notes on orthography and proper names

Dhôte may occasionally appear as a surname, a brand name, or a place name, but such uses are rare and not representative of a general concept. When writing in standard French, use hôte for the generic host/guest sense.

See also

hôte; host (English); host organism; host computer.