Hospice, hospital, and hostile all share a root meaning "stranger" — in the ancient world, the person at your door was either a guest to honor or an enemy to fight.
A facility or program providing palliative care and support for terminally ill patients; historically, a house of rest for travelers or pilgrims.
From French hospice, from Latin hospitium (hospitality, a place of entertainment for strangers), from hospes (host, guest, stranger), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰóstis (stranger, guest) + *potis (master, lord). Key roots: *gʰóstis (Proto-Indo-European: "stranger, guest, host"), *potis (Proto-Indo-European: "master, lord, powerful").
The word hospice shares its root with hospital, hotel, host, and hospitality — all from Latin hospes, which remarkably meant both "host" and "guest." The PIE root behind hospes literally means "lord of strangers," combining *gʰóstis (stranger) with *potis (master). This same *gʰóstis root also gives us ghost and hostile — suggesting that in ancient cultures