accommodation

The lodging sense, in English since 1600, grew out of the word's older idea of fitting things together. In British use it is usually a mass noun with no article: accommodation is included, student accommodation fills up fast. The countable plural also turns up, as in the accommodations at that hotel were quite luxurious. When you mean a place to stay in British English, the safer choice is the singular, uncountable form.

The core meaning stays closest to the Latin: accommodātiō, "adjustment, compliance," from accommodō, "adapt, put in order." It typically takes to, as in the accommodation of one thing to another. Sir Matthew Hale, in The Primitive Origination of Mankind (1677), describes the body as built "with accommodation to their several functions and offices." Specialist uses, from the physiologist's adjustment to a settlement between parties, all narrow this one.

Diplomacy and labor relations favor the countable form: parties reach, find or come to an accommodation, meaning a specific settlement. Uncountable, it names the process of give-and-take itself. Bryan Ward-Perkins, in The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (2005), mocks histories of the Germanic settlements that read like a vicarage tea party. In those accounts, a newcomer's awkwardness gives way to cozy mutual accommodation.

Here the adjustment has become an object: a fitting or convenience, usually in the plural. The American novelist Winston Churchill's The Celebrity (1897) gives a yacht a finished cabin and "accommodations for keeping" things aboard. In that construction, accommodations for plus an -ing verb names what the fitting serves. Letitia Elizabeth Landon's coach full of accommodations (1838) uses the same plural on the road. Neither means rooms to sleep in, which is the lodging sense.

Physiology and biology use the word for adjustment at any scale: a whole organism, a single organ, or one part of it. It usually takes to, as in a muscle's accommodation to heavier loads or a kidney's accommodation to reduced blood flow. It is the general term, and the eye's focusing is its best-known special case.

Optometry's sense names the eye refocusing as an object moves nearer or farther. The lens does the work: it changes shape as the ciliary muscle contracts, so the image stays clear across distances. In clinical use it is treated as a measurable capacity. A patient's accommodation can be tested, and it can weaken or be lost, which is why near work like reading grows harder.

Sociolinguistics uses the word for the way speakers shift accent, vocabulary, rate or register toward, or away from, the people they are talking with. Annette Becker and Markus Bieswanger's Introduction to English Linguistics contrasts pilots, who say fuselage, with laypeople, who say the body of an aircraft. Their point is that making one's language more similar signals group membership. It usually takes to, as in accommodation to a dialect.

In commerce the word names the loan itself and is countable: a bank grants an accommodation, and a merchant secures one. It is typically short-term money to meet an immediate need. The obliging act of willingness to help has become a financial arrangement. Keep it distinct from the signed paper instrument, where someone lends a name rather than cash.

Contract law uses the word for a seller's tender of substitute or nonconforming goods when the goods ordered cannot be supplied. The key feature is that the offer binds no one until the purchaser accepts it. A buyer who takes delivery of the substitute is held to the contract, while a buyer who refuses it is not.