hostel

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A commercial overnight lodging place, with dormitory accommodation and shared facilities, especially a youth hostel.

   a rundown hostel

2. 2
   noun

   A small, unendowed college in Oxford or Cambridge.

   There are also in Oxford certeine hostels or hals, which may rightwell be called by the names of colleges , if it were not that there is more libertie in them , than is to be seen in the other

3. 3
   noun

   A public hotel.

   Immediately at hand was a small, mean public-house - one of those dingy establishments that seem to express, by their morbid and retiring appearance, a certain anxiety to escape the eye of the police - and into the parlour of this hostel Quin promptly led the way.

4. 4
   noun

   inexpensive supervised lodging (especially for youths on bicycling trips)

5. 5
   noun

   a hotel providing overnight lodging for travelers

6. 6
   noun

   A temporary refuge for the homeless providing a bed and sometimes food.

7. 7
   noun

   A university or school dormitory, a place of accommodation for students.

8. 8
   verb

   To stay in a hostel during one's travels.

Etymology

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).