hostel.
An overnight lodging place for travelers, with dormitory accommodation and shared facilities, especially a youth hostel.
Meaning & usage
An overnight lodging place for travelers, with dormitory accommodation and shared facilities, especially a youth hostel.
a rundown hostel
A temporary refuge for the homeless providing a bed and sometimes food.
A small, unendowed college in Oxford or Cambridge.
A public hotel.
A university or school dormitory, a place of accommodation for students.
Where this word comes from
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).
To stay in a hostel during one's travels.
To lodge (a person) in a hostel.
Where this word comes from
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).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.