hotel
Pluralhotels
- 1A commercial place to stay that offers rooms and other services to paying guests, typically bigger than a guesthouse and frequently belonging to a chain.
Floods washed away roads, bridges, and hotels along the valley.
The conference booked out every hotel within walking distance.
UsageUsually a hotel; an hotel now sounds dated. You stay at or in a hotel.
Similarinn
Note
Older writing often treats the h as weak, in the French manner, and writes an hotel. John Morison, in an 1868 book about Australia, recalls staying "at an hotel in Wellington" in New Zealand.
- 2A pub.
The Railway Hotel has not let a room in decades, but its front bar never closes early.
Every outback hotel seems to have a verandah, a dog, and one regular who remembers the flood.
Note
Australia and western Canada give the word to the pub, and a hotel there may let no rooms at all. A name on the sign such as the Railway Hotel promises a bar first. Where the South Asian dining sense sends you to eat, this one sends you to drink. A traveler who wants a bed should ask rather than assume.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 3 facts
- Hotel has a pub sense in Australia and western Canada. en.wiktionary.org
- An establishment called a hotel in these regions may offer no accommodation. en.wikipedia.org
- Railway Hotel is an example of a hotel name used for a drinking establishment. therailway.com.au
- 3A restaurant; any dining establishment.
Every roadside hotel on the highway advertises meals, not rooms.
The family ran a vegetarian hotel that seated forty at long tables.
Similarrestaurant, eatery
Note
In South Asia the word also covers a place to eat, and such a hotel need not offer beds at all: a roadside hotel sells meals, and a vegetarian hotel is a vegetarian restaurant. A visitor who expects the lodging meaning should check whether a room is actually on offer before assuming one.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 2 facts
- In South Asia, hotel can mean a restaurant rather than an establishment providing lodging. en.wiktionary.org
- Roadside eating establishments can be called hotels. nri.up.gov.in
Less common meanings
- 4In Monopoly, the larger red property piece, as distinct from the green houses.
Landing on a street with a hotel can cost a player everything.
The bank had run out of hotels, so the players had to make do with houses.
- 5The department or area of a cruise ship devoted to passenger cabins and dining.
The hotel manager on a cruise ship answers to the captain but runs a separate world.
Below the hotel lie the engine rooms and crew quarters passengers never see.
- 6Alternative letter-case form of Hotel: the code word for the letter H in the NATO/ICAO radiotelephony spelling alphabet.
Over the radio the registration came through as hotel, bravo, x-ray.
Dispatchers say hotel rather than H because the letter alone is easily misheard.
Note
A code word, not a building: in the spelling alphabet used over radio and telephone, it stands for the letter H. The alphabet's words are normally capitalized as Hotel, and the lower-case form is the same code word, not a separate term. In a string like hotel, bravo, x-ray, it carries no trace of the lodging meaning and names only the letter.
- 7A large town house or mansion; a grand private residence, especially in France, now chiefly historical.
Before the Revolution, each great noble family kept its own private hotel in Paris.
[T]he cream-coloured house (supposed to be modelled on the private hotels of the Parisian aristocracy) was there[.]
1920, Edith Wharton, The Age of InnocenceNote
The word's French meaning, carried into English intact: a hôtel was a great town house, not somewhere to rent a room. French hôtel goes back through Old French ostel to Latin hospitālis, "hospitable," which also gave English hostel and hospital. The sense now belongs mainly to history and French settings, and a qualifier keeps it clear, as in Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence (1920): "the private hotels of the Parisian aristocracy."
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 8 facts
- English hotel was borrowed from French hôtel. en.wiktionary.org
- French hôtel has the town-house or mansion meaning described here. en.wiktionary.org
- French hôtel descends through Old French ostel from Latin hospitālis, meaning hospitable. en.wiktionary.org
- English hostel also derives ultimately from Latin hospitalis. en.wiktionary.org
- English hospital shares this etymological origin. en.wiktionary.org
- Edith Wharton wrote The Age of Innocence, whose first book edition is dated 1920. en.wikisource.org
- The first-edition title page gives 1920 as the publication year. en.wikisource.org
- The quoted phrase occurs in the novel's narration and describes private residences. gutenberg.org
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of hotel apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
Hotel, hostel, and hospital are doublets, all going back to Latin hospitālis ("hospitable") and Late Latin hospitālis ("hospice, shelter, guesthouse"). The line ran through Old French ostel and Middle French hostel to French hôtel, which English borrowed.