motel
Americannoun
-
motels
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of motel
Compare meaning
How does motel compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
A motel is a place you can stay overnight, with plenty of parking and easy access to a highway. Many motels feature rooms with separate entrances that face a large parking lot. A motel is very much like a hotel — it fact, motels were originally "motor hotels." The first official motel was built in 1925, designed to be an easy, cheap stop on a long car trip. While hotels are often in the middle of cities, motels are usually on a city's outskirts, providing space to park and a quick walk from car to room. The popularity of motels increased through the twentieth century, along with the development of the modern highway system.
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:
Our big annual vacation was driving to Florida and staying in a modest motel.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 3, 2026
The interview, filmed in a Philadelphia studio dressed up to resemble a seedy motel in a wink at the laptop scandal, quickly became a viral sensation, generating millions of views.
From Salon ● Aug. 2, 2026
The address she was given turned out to be a "dingy gross motel", but she says she presumed they would be heading out somewhere else.
From BBC ● Jul. 29, 2026
It was not immediately clear whether it was motel staff who alerted authorities.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 4, 2026
When we leave our motel room early in the morning, the air outside smells like snow, even though there isn’t a cloud in the sky.
From "The Sea in Winter" by Christine Day
The city’s overall homeless population rose 3.4% including those the city puts up in motels.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026
Inside Safe, the mayor’s signature homelessness program, has moved more than 6,000 people into hotels, motels and other types of interim housing since Bass took office in December 2022.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2026
Pandemic-era rental assistance provided many with a pathway into permanent housing, including some hotels and motels that converted to housing.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 11, 2026
At that point, she received credit for moving swiftly to clear homeless encampments across the city, and to move their occupants into hotels, motels and other temporary facilities.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 8, 2026
The villages are the prettiest, I guess, in the whole nation, neat and white- painted, and—not counting the motels and tourist courts—unchanged for a hundred years except for traffic and paved streets.
From "Travels with Charley in Search of America" by John Steinbeck
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.
