dormitory
Americannoun
plural
dormitories-
a building, as at a college, containing a number of private or semiprivate rooms for residents, usually along with common bathroom facilities and recreation areas.
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a room containing a number of beds and serving as communal sleeping quarters, as in an institution, fraternity house, or passenger ship.
noun
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a large room, esp at a school or institution, containing several beds
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a building, esp at a college or camp, providing living and sleeping accommodation
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(modifier) denoting or relating to an area from which most of the residents commute to work (esp in the phrase dormitory suburb )
Etymology
Origin of dormitory
1475–85; < Latin dormītōrium bedroom, equivalent to dormī ( re ) to sleep + -tōrium -tory 2
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.
At a dormitory there in her freshman year she discovered luxury: a bed of her own.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 26, 2026
Lam Thanh, 50, who manages a dormitory for workers near one of Ho Chi Minh City's estimated 1,000 courts, says the cacophony is proving to be costly.
From Barron's • Dec. 28, 2025
Every morning, he said, an officer goes from dormitory to dormitory asking whether anyone wants to self-deport.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 1, 2025
Voters got an early display of that work ethic when Takaichi slept in a parliamentary dormitory and got to her office to begin work at 3 a.m. on Nov. 7.
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 24, 2025
The other children in the dormitory had been asleep for hours.
From "The BFG" by Roald Dahl
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
