DictionaryAI

hall

noun
SayHAWL/hɔl/UK/hɔːl/

Pluralhalls

9 meanings of hall

Practice

  1. 1
    meeting roomnouncountable
    A large room used for meetings, gatherings, or public events.

    The town council booked the hall for its annual meeting.

    Hundreds of guests filled the hall for the awards ceremony.

    UsageCommon compounds: concert hall, dining hall.

    Similarauditorium, chamber

  2. 2
    corridornouncountable
    A corridor or passage inside a building that connects rooms or leads to them.

    The bedrooms all open onto a narrow hall.

    She kicked off her shoes in the hall by the front door.

    UsageOften down the hall or across the hall: her office is just down the hall.

    Similarcorridor, passage, passageway

  3. 3
    student housingnouncountable
    A building that provides living accommodation for students at a university.

    Most first-year students are offered a room in a hall near campus.

    The new hall houses over three hundred undergraduates.

    UsageAlso called a hall of residence or a residence hall.

    Similardormitory, residence

  4. 4
    nouncountable or uncountable
    In some colleges, the dining hall where students eat together, or the meal served there, as in to go to hall.

    After lectures, she hurried to hall for dinner.

    The college hall offers a vegetarian option at every meal.

    UsageOften used with no article: go to hall, eat in hall.

    Similarrefectory

    Note

    A college canteen named after the room it usually occupies. Often the dining room is the traditional hall itself, but not always, and the name stays with the meals even when they are served somewhere else. The word then takes one step further, to the meal itself.

    Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 3 facts

    • The college canteen sense is associated with the traditional hall used as its dining room. en.wiktionary.org
    • The name can remain attached to college meals when they move elsewhere; Keble provides an example. keble.ox.ac.uk
    • The dining-room sense extends to the meal served there. en.wiktionary.org
  5. 5
    country housenouncountable
    A manor house: the large country residence of a landed family.

    The estate centers on a Tudor hall surrounded by parkland.

    Everyone in the village worked for the family up at the hall, either on the farm or in the house.

    UsageOften part of a house's name, as in Haddon Hall; locals may say up at the hall.

    Similarmanor, mansion

    Note

    Here a single room has given its name to a whole house. Old English heall already covered a dwelling, a palace and a law-court. The manor came to be called a hall because the lord's manorial court sat in its great room. The word also works inside a house's name, as in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew: "Kate of Kate-hall."

  6. 6
    medieval main roomnouncountable
    The principal room of a secular medieval building, used as the center of household life.

    In the medieval manor, the lord, his family, and the servants all gathered around the fire in the hall each evening.

    The household gathered in the hall for meals and entertainment.

    Note

    The great room at the heart of a medieval house, where the household ate and gathered and where justice could be done. "Secular" sets it apart from churches and chapels. Its courts are why the manor house took the name hall, and the traditional college dining room still keeps its form.

    Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 5 facts

    • The medieval hall was the household's central communal room, used for eating and gathering. en.wikipedia.org
    • Justice could be administered in a medieval manor-house hall. en.wikipedia.org
    • Secular distinguishes the domestic building from buildings used for religion. en.wikipedia.org
    • The manor-house sense of hall is explained by courts being held in its hall. en.wiktionary.org
    • Traditional college dining halls preserve the medieval great-hall form. en.wikipedia.org

Less common meanings

  1. 7
    living roomnounIndiacountable
    A living room: the main room in a home used for sitting and relaxing.

    The family gathered in the hall to watch television in the evening.

    Guests were seated in the hall while tea was brought out from the kitchen.

    Similarlounge, parlor

    Note

    Indian English uses hall for the main sitting room of a home. That makes it easy to misread across varieties. A guest asked to wait in the hall is being shown into the family's living space, not left standing in the corridor meaning that most other speakers would picture.

    Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 1 fact

  2. 8
    nounobsolete
    A passage cleared through a crowd, as to make room for dancing.
    Then cry, a hall, a hall! Come, father Rosin, with your fiddle now.
    1633, Ben Jonson, “A Tale of a Tub. A Comedy”
    Note

    An obsolete use that lived mostly as a shout: "a hall, a hall!" was called out to make a crowd fall back and open a space. In Ben Jonson's A Tale of a Tub (1633) the cry clears the floor and summons the fiddler for a masque.

    Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 4 facts

    • Hall had an obsolete sense denoting a cleared passage through a crowd. en.wiktionary.org
    • The cry 'a hall, a hall!' called for people to clear a space. hcmc.uvic.ca
    • Ben Jonson wrote A Tale of a Tub. hcmc.uvic.ca
    • 1633 is its first-performance year. The first edition's title page is dated 1640; Folger records actual publication as delayed until 1641. emed.folger.edu
  3. 9
    noun
    An institution that provides specialized professional training or awards professional degrees and licenses.

Practice

Can you tell the meanings of hall apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.

Origin

This word comes from Middle English "halle," from Old English "heall" (meaning hall, dwelling, palace, temple, or law-court). It traces back through Proto-West Germanic "*hallu" and Proto-Germanic "*hallō" to the Proto-Indo-European root "*ḱel-" ("to hide, conceal"). It is related to German "Halle," Dutch "hal," and Latin "cella," and is a doublet of "cell" and "cella."

Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 8 facts