hostel

nounverbattested in dialogue

United Kingdom//ˈhɒstəl//
United States//ˈhɑstəl//
//ˈhɔsʈəl//
//hɔsˈʈɛl//
//ˈhosʈəl//

An overnight lodging place for travelers, with dormitory accommodation and shared facilities, especially a youth hostel.

noun

1
An overnight lodging place for travelers, with dormitory accommodation and shared facilities, especially a youth hostel.
a rundown hostel
The rest, around the hostel fire, / Their drowsy limbs recline; / For pillow, underneath each head, / The quiver and the targe were laid: / Deep slumbering on the hostel floor, / Oppressed with toil and ale, / they snore: […]
The excitement was palpable for believers and non-believers alike. Next, Francis declined to move into the gilded papal apartment vacated by his predecessor. Instead he was going to remain in the small room in the Santa Marta hostel in the Vatican where he had stayed during the conclave.
2
A temporary refuge for the homeless providing a bed and sometimes food.
3
obsoleteA small, unendowed college in Oxford or Cambridge.
There are also in Oxford certeine hostels or hals, which may rightwell be called by the names of colleges , if it were not that there is more libertie in them , than is to be seen in the other
4
obsoleteA public hotel.
Immediately at hand was a small, mean public-house - one of those dingy establishments that seem to express, by their morbid and retiring appearance, a certain anxiety to escape the eye of the police - and into the parlour of this hostel Quin promptly led the way.
5
A university or school dormitory, a place of accommodation for students.

Etymology

From Middle English hostel, from Old French hostel, ostel, from Late Latin hospitale (“hospice”), from Classical Latin hospitalis (“hospitable”) itself from hospes (“host”) + -alis (“-al”). Doublet of hotel and hospital. Not in use from late 17th c. (in the usual sense from mid 16th c.) to 1808, when it was revived by Walter Scott in his poem Marmion (see the quotation).

verb

1
To stay in a hostel during one's travels.
2
To lodge (a person) in a hostel.

Forms

plural: hostels
past tense: hosteled, hostelled
past participle: hosteled, hostelled
present participle: hosteling, hostelling
third person singular: hostels

Hoss · A surname.host · One which receives or entertains a guest, socially,…hostage · A person given as a pledge or security for the performance of…

hostel · An overnight lodging place for travelers, with dormitory accommodation and shared facilities, especially a youth hostel.

hostess · A female host.hostile · Not friendly; appropriate to an enemy; showing the…hostility · The state of being hostile.

The neighbouring pages — Alphabetical 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.