caravansary
Americannoun
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caravansaries
plural
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(in the Middle East and North Africa) an inn, usually with a large courtyard, for the overnight accommodation of caravans.
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any large inn or hotel.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of caravansary
First recorded in 1590–1600; from French caravanserai, from Persian kārwānsarāy, equivalent to kārwān caravan + sarāy “mansion, inn”
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
This caravansary in Iran was built in the twelfth century and served as a fortified place for travelers to rest.
From Textbooks ● Dec. 14, 2022
He was married now and partook zealously in the Manhattan social caravansary.
From New York Times ● Jul. 8, 2021
With the vast and sparsely populated landscapes of “The Revenant,” I wanted Alejandro González Iñárritu’s balletic cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki to swivel the camera around to show the teeming crew and the high-tech caravansary behind them.
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 11, 2015
The beach and adjacent campground looked like a hybrid of refugee camp and a tailgate party, with a winding caravansary of tarp canopies, trailers, smoking grills, windmills, kites and ancient conversion vans.
From New York Times ● Jul. 22, 2011
They were to meet them in four months’ time at the caravansary in Alkonost, where the full delegation would assemble to strike out together across the Elmuthaleth.
From "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor
In addition to providing shelter, caravansaries were a place for merchants to meet other traders to exchange goods as well as share and spread Islamic ideas and traditions.
From Textbooks ● Apr. 19, 2023
It is most useful to imagine it as a network of “legs” on a journey, along which merchants and traders traveled via caravan with their wares, pausing to rest at caravansaries along the way.
From Textbooks ● Apr. 19, 2023
The town of hundreds of madrassas and caravansaries, and 100 or so mosques, had been subjected to the only fate worse than Genghis Khan’s, that fifth horseman of the apocalypse: tourism.
From New York Times ● May 11, 2020
If this were the Sahara, caravansaries would have stopped by its green pools for thousands of years.
From Salon ● Jan. 21, 2020
Such an environment he proposed to create in huge caravansaries, which he called phalansteries.
From Socialism and Democracy in Europe by Samuel P. Orth
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
