hotel

American  

[hoh-tel] / hoʊˈtɛl /

noun

1. a commercial establishment offering lodging to travelers and sometimes to permanent residents, and often having restaurants, meeting rooms, stores, etc., that are available to the general public.

   Synonyms:

   motel, guesthouse, hostel, hostelry

2. a word used in communications to represent the letter H.

3. Military. Hotel, the NATO name for a class of nuclear-powered Soviet submarines armed with single-warhead ballistic missiles: in service with the Soviet Navy 1959–91.

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Hotel ¹ British  

/ həʊˈtɛl /

noun

1. communications a code word for the letter h

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hotel ² British  

/ həʊˈtɛl /

noun

1. a commercially run establishment providing lodging and usually meals for guests, and often containing a public bar

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Related Words

Hotel, house, inn, tavern refer to establishments for the lodging or entertainment of travelers and others. Hotel is the common word, suggesting a more or less commodious establishment with up-to-date appointments, although this is not necessarily true: the best hotel in the city; a cheap hotel near the docks. The word house is often used in the name of a particular hotel, the connotation being wealth and luxury: the Parker House; the Palmer House. Inn suggests a place of homelike comfort and old-time appearance or ways; it is used for quaint or archaic effect in the names of some public houses and hotels in the U.S.: the Pickwick Inn; the Wayside Inn. A tavern, like the English public house, is a house where liquor is sold for drinking on the premises; until recently it was archaic or dialectal in the U.S., but has been revived to substitute for saloon, which had unfavorable connotations: Taverns are required to close by two o'clock in the morning. The word has also been used in the sense of inn, especially in New England, ever since Colonial days: Wiggins Tavern.

Other Word Forms

• hotelless adjective

Etymology

Origin of hotel

First recorded in 1670–80; from French hôtel, Old French hostel hostel

Compare meaning

How does hotel compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:

• motel vs. hotel

Example Sentences

No matter how nice your hotel, meals and ride home are, she said, there’s no place like home.

From The Wall Street Journal

Al-Monitor, which is based in the US, said local news reports indicate Kittleson was taken near a hotel in the heart of the capital.

From BBC

Even better, the windows actually open, which I always love in a hotel room.

From Salon

Then there’s the upstart GRU Space, created just last year with the goal of building hotels on the moon.

From MarketWatch

But before the narrator leaves his hotel for his mentor’s house, he breaks his cellphone, the only recording device he has.

From The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

• hostel
• house
• inn
• lodging
• motel
• resort
• tavern