hotel
/həʊˈtɛl
/- He instead spent a couple of nights in a Frankfurt hotel room when nobody showed up to greet him at the other end.
- It has many of the trappings of a five-star hotel, but the service can be a bit patchy.
- The hotel staff would tell tourists how great it was and the tourists would want to go.
Synonyms
- HAL is Hotel, Alpha, Lima.
Usage
The normal pronunciation of hotel sounds the h-, which means that the preceding indefinite article is a. However, the older pronunciation without the h- is still occasionally heard, and leads to the preceding indefinite article being an rather than a. For a discussion of this, see an (usage).
Origin
Mid 18th century: from French hôtel, from Old French hostel (see hostel).
English adopted the French word hôtel in the mid 17th century. For the first century of its life people used it only in French phrases and to refer to the large town mansions of French aristocrats, but since the mid 18th century the modern sense, ‘a place providing accommodation and meals for paying guests’, has prevailed. The French word was originally spelled hostel, and this older form came into English in the Middle Ages, in the general sense ‘a place to stay’. It was also used for an inn or what we would now call a hotel. The word hostel has since become restricted to places for specific groups of people such as students and migrant workers. The word goes back to Latin hospis ( see hospital).