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hotel

 - 3 dictionary results

ho⋅tel

[hoh-tel]
–noun
1. a commercial establishment offering lodging to travelers and sometimes to permanent residents, and often having restaurants, meeting rooms, stores, etc., that are available to the general public.
2. (initial capital letter) Military. the NATO name for a class of nuclear-powered Soviet ballistic missile submarine armed with up to six single-warhead missiles.
3. a word used in communications to represent the letter H.

Origin:
1635–45; < F hôtel, OF hostel hostel


ho⋅tel⋅less, adjective


1. hostelry, hostel, guesthouse, motel. Hotel, house, inn, tavern refer to establishments for the lodging or entertainment of travelers and others. Hotel is the common word, suggesting a more or less commodious establishment with up-to-date appointments, although this is not necessarily true: the best hotel in the city; a cheap hotel near the docks. The word house is often used in the name of a particular hotel, the connotation being wealth and luxury: the Parker House; the Palmer House. Inn suggests a place of homelike comfort and old-time appearance or ways; it is used for quaint or archaic effect in the names of some public houses and hotels in the U.S.: the Pickwick Inn; the Wayside Inn. A tavern, like the English public house, is a house where liquor is sold for drinking on the premises; until recently it was archaic or dialectal in the U.S., but has been revived to substitute for saloon, which had unfavorable connotations: Taverns are required to close by two o'clock in the morning. The word has also been used in the sense of inn, esp. in New England, ever since Colonial days: Wiggins Tavern.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
Cite This Source Link To hotel
ho·tel   (hō-těl')   
n.  An establishment that provides lodging and usually meals and other services for travelers and other paying guests.

[French hôtel, from Old French hostel, hostel; see hostel.]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Word Origin & History

hotel 
1644, "public official residence," from Fr. hôtel, from O.Fr. hostel "a lodging," from M.L. hospitale "inn" (see hostel). Modern sense of "an inn of the better sort" is first recorded 1765. Hotelier is a 1905 borrowing of Fr. hôtelier "hotelkeeper."
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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