hostel
/ˈhɑstəl/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.43 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
An overnight lodging place for travelers, with dormitory accommodation and shared facilities, especially a youth hostel.
noun
A university or school dormitory, a place of accommodation for students.
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "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"
- "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."
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).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈhɑstəl/
- British English: /ˈhɒstəl/