# hotel

Pronunciation: say "hoh-TEL" US /hoʊˈtɛl/, UK /həʊˈtɛl/

## Noun

1. A commercial place to stay that offers rooms and other services to paying guests, typically bigger than a guesthouse and frequently belonging to a chain.
   - Simple: A building where you pay to sleep, and often to eat, when you are away from home.
   - _Floods washed away roads, bridges, and hotels along the valley._
   - _The conference booked out every hotel within walking distance._
2. A pub. *(Australia, Canada)*
   - Simple: In Australia and western Canada, a 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._
3. A restaurant; any dining establishment. *(South Asia)*
   - Simple: In South Asia, a restaurant or any place that serves meals.
   - _Every roadside hotel on the highway advertises meals, not rooms._
   - _The family ran a vegetarian hotel that seated forty at long tables._
4. In Monopoly, the larger red property piece, as distinct from the green houses.
   - Simple: In the board game Monopoly, the big red building that replaces four 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._
5. The department or area of a cruise ship devoted to passenger cabins and dining.
   - Simple: The part of a cruise ship where guests sleep and eat.
   - _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._
6. Alternative letter-case form of Hotel: the code word for the letter H in the NATO/ICAO radiotelephony spelling alphabet. — Alternative letter-case form of Hotel from the NATO/ICAO Phonetic Alphabet.
   - Simple: Another spelling of Hotel, with a small h: the word said for the letter H when spelling aloud by radio or phone.
   - _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._
7. A large town house or mansion; a grand private residence, especially in France, now chiefly historical.
   - Simple: In the past, a large grand house in a town, especially in France.
   - _Before the Revolution, each great noble family kept its own private hotel in Paris._
   - _The hotel of the Duc de Guise had a courtyard large enough for carriages to turn._

## 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.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/hotel (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).