Skip to content
OneKitly

hospital

nounadjectivetop 1 000 in film dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈhɒs.pɪ.tl̩//
  • United Kingdom//ˈɒs.pɪ.tl̩//
  • United States//ˈhɑs.pɪ.tl̩//
  • United States//ˈhɑs.pɪ.ɾl̩//

A large medical facility, usually in a building with multiple floors, where seriously ill or injured patients are given extensive medical or surgical treatment.

noun

  1. 1

    A large medical facility, usually in a building with multiple floors, where seriously ill or injured patients are given extensive medical or surgical treatment.

    Luckily an ambulance arrived quickly and he was rushed to hospital.

    Luckily an ambulance arrived quickly and he was rushed to the hospital.

    This section of the Act gives the court powers to assess whether treatment is going to be beneficial and hence whether hospital is a suitable disposal option.

  2. 2

    A building founded for the long-term care of its residents, such as an almshouse.

    The foundling hospital took in abandoned children and educated them.

  3. 3

    obsoleteA place of lodging.

    […] they spide a goodly castle, plast / Foreby a riuer in a pleasaunt dale, / Which choosing for that euenings hospitale, / They thither marcht […]

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *gʰóstis Proto-Indo-European *pótis Proto-Indo-European *gʰóstipotis Proto-Italic *hostipotis Latin hospes Proto-Indo-European *h₂el- Proto-Indo-European *-is Proto-Indo-European *h₂élisder.? Proto-Italic *-ālis Latin -ālis Latin hospitālis Late Latin hospitālebor. Old French hospitalbor. Middle English hospital English hospital From Middle English hospital, hospitall, from Old French hospital (Modern French hôpital), from Late Latin hospitālis, hospitāle (“hospice, shelter, guesthouse”), from noun use of Latin hospitālis (“hospitable”), from hospes (“host, guest”). Doublet of hotel and hostel. Displaced native Middle English lechehous, from Old English lǣċehūs (literally “doctor house”).

adjective

  1. 1

    obsoleteHospitable.

    At last the Ocean, that hospital friend to the wretched, opened her capacious arms to receive him; and he instantly resolved to accept her kind invitation.

Forms

plural
hospitals
comparative
more hospital
superlative
most hospital
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).