hall
/hɔːl
/noun
1The room or space just inside the front entrance of a house or flat.Set on five acres, there is a reception hall, drawing room, anteroom, dining room, kitchen, pantry, four bedrooms and a bathroom....
- The walls in the reception hall and dining room are covered with glazed Egyptian cotton canvas.
- It has a reception hall, lounge cum dining room, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom.
Synonyms
entrance hall, hallway, entry, entrance, lobby, foyer, vestibule, reception area, atrium, concourse;
passageway, passage, corridor;
North American entryway
1.1North American A corridor or area on to which rooms open.She tiptoed quietly to her room down the hall and opened the door; she looked around....
- Just as they reached the door, the room across the hall opened up, and an older couple came out.
- I walked out of my room and down the hall, opening the door that was two doors down from his.
2A building or large room used for meetings, concerts, or other events: the village hall...
- Immediately he began touring the islands, putting notices up in village halls and organising community meetings.
- More than 45 people turned up for the meeting at the village hall last night to voice their concern at what has become a controversial issue.
- In pubs and clubs, halls and meeting rooms, Scots dressed in tartan for this, the most traditional night in their social calendar, and to stand while the Haggis was piped in.
Synonyms
assembly hall, assembly room, meeting room, large public room, chamber;
conference hall, lecture room, theatre, concert hall, auditorium, dance hall, church hall, village hall, town hall, guildhall
2.1 historical The building in which a guild was housed.The upper floor was the great hall where guild members met....
- Barley Hall was a former medieval hall which was acquired by York Archeological Trust in the 1980s when the site came up for redevelopment.
- He persuaded the council that the medieval hall must be saved.
3A large room in a mansion or palace used for receptions and banquets.He built palaces and banqueting halls on the hill and held meetings of the other provincial kings every three years at which time they made laws and held festivals of music and sport....
- The rest of the palace, Timon's room and the banquet halls, had collapsed in a head of dust and smoke.
- Finally, they fetched us from the room and brought us down through the kitchen to the banquet hall.
3.1 [in names] British A large country house, especially one with a landed estate: Darlington Hall...
- When businessman Bill Reidy ploughed his savings into renovating a derelict 17th Century hall he believed he had created his dream home.
- The original features of the hall's reception rooms, previously sub-divided into small offices, can now be seen again.
3.2The principal living room of a medieval house.In the living hall was a large central hearth and a raised wooden platform along each wall, which would have been used for seating, sleeping and as a working space....
- Svensholm is a small Viking homestead, comprising a large hall and a few outbuildings.
- Like most other farms in Anglo-Saxon England, Linstede consists of a hall and outbuildings, surrounded by fields and pastures.
4 (also hall of residence) British A university building containing rooms for students to live in: for a brief time they had shared a room in hall...
- It takes him 35 minutes to drive to his job managing the student the halls of residence at Leeds Metropolitan University.
- The Yorkshire Post understands she had signed up for two months' French study with the Alliance Francaise in Lyon and was living in a university hall of residence.
- It was the halls of residence at Scarborough University.
4.1The room used for meals in a college, university, or school: he dined in hall...
- We reached the meal hall in scant enough time to have our names marked off on the role and find a place on the long, very conference like table and order our meal on the menu.
- It was really easy to learn how to hate meals in the dining hall.
- I could not understand why a meal in the hall should cause this alarm.
Origin
Old English hall, heall (originally denoting a roofed space, located centrally, for the communal use of a tribal chief and his people); of Germanic origin and related to German Halle, Dutch hall, also to Norwegian and Swedish hall.