Hostel

Definitions

1. A commercial overnight lodging place, with dormitory accommodation and shared facilities, especially a youth hostel.
2. A temporary refuge for the homeless providing a bed and sometimes food.
3. A small, unendowed college in Oxford or Cambridge.
   obsolete
4. A public hotel.
   obsolete
5. A university or school dormitory, a place of accommodation for students.
   South-Africa, South-Asia

Equivalents

Examples

“a rundown hostel”

“The rest⟳, around the hostel fire, / Their drowsy limbs recline; / For pillow, underneath each head, / The quiver and the targe were laid: / Deep slumbering on the hostel floor, / Oppressed with toil and ale, / they snore: […]”

“There are also in Oxford certeine hostels or hals, which may rightwell be called by the names of colleges , if it were not that there is more libertie in them , than is to be seen in the other”

“Immediately at hand was a small, mean⟳ public-house - one of those dingy establishments that seem to express⟳, by their morbid and retiring appearance, a certain anxiety to escape⟳ the eye of the police - and into the parlour of this hostel Quin promptly led the way.”

CEFR level