hotel
Americannoun
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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
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a word used in communications to represent the letter H.
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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.
noun
noun
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:
Explanation
When you're on vacation, one place you can stay for a nightly fee is a hotel. Most hotels provide accommodations for sleeping, with minibars, pools, and ice machines to keep you entertained. While in Australia and New Zealand a hotel can also be a bar or a pub, most English-speakers recognize this word as the equivalent of an inn. Simple hotels give you a bed to sleep in and a bathroom to use, while fancier hotels might have beautiful furnishings, separate sitting rooms, swimming pools, and cafes. In the 1760s, hotel was defined as "an inn of the better sort."
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.
Later that evening, they explored the city and stayed overnight in a hotel.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 23, 2026
The noisy chaos of the overcrowded Congolese capital reverberates behind the walls of the hotel.
From Barron's • Apr. 22, 2026
Parts of the city remain sealed off, the signs are still up and the hotel where talks were expected to take place is empty, ready for the hoped-for return of high-level delegations.
From BBC • Apr. 22, 2026
She was asked about the Rosslyn Park sevens tournament, with Williams and Hands arriving at a hotel on the Sunday night ahead of the match on Monday.
From BBC • Apr. 21, 2026
The Hawaiian shirts fairly scream to be put on, the sunscreen smells appealingly like coconut—and yet you spend the day in bed, glued to the hotel television.
From "The Hidden Gallery" by Maryrose Wood
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.
