Hostel Meaning
/ˈhɑstəl/Definition, CEFR level B1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounA commercial overnight lodging place, with dormitory accommodation and shared facilities, especially a youth hostel.
nounAn overnight lodging place for travelers, with dormitory accommodation and shared facilities, especially a youth hostel.
Sentence Examples
Is there a youth hostel near here?
Is there a youth hostel around here?
Some insist that the Spanish hostel is a pornographic film.
CEFR Practice Quiz
While traveling on a low budget, we chose a cheap ____ instead of a fancy hotel.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The budget travelers decided to stay in a ____ to save money on their trip across Europe.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English hostel, from Old French hostel, ostel, from Late Latin hospitale (“hospice”), from Classical Latin hospitalis (“hospitable”) itself from hospes (“host”) + -alis (“-al”). Doublet of hotel and hospital. Not in use from late 17th c. (in the usual sense from mid 16th c.) to 1808, when it was revived by Walter Scott in his poem Marmion (see the quotation).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"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: […]"
— 1808 February 22, Walter Scott, “Canto Third. The Hostel, or Inn.”, in Marmion; a Tale of Flodden Field, Edinburgh: […] J[ames] Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Company, […]; London: William Miller, and John Murray, →OCLC, stanza XXVIII, pages 161–162:
"The excitement was palpable for believers and non-believers alike. Next, Francis declined to move into the gilded papal apartment vacated by his predecessor. Instead he was going to remain in the small room in the Santa Marta hostel in the Vatican where he had stayed during the conclave."
— 2025 April 21, Peter Stanford, “Pope Francis obituary”, in The Guardian:
"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"
— 1577, Raphaell Holinshed, The Firste Volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande […], volume I, London: […] [Henry Bynneman] for Iohn Harrison, →OCLC:
"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."
— 1913, Norman Lindsay, A Curate in Bohemia, Sydney: N.S.W. Bookstall Co., published 1932, page 135:
Explore More B1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
While traveling on a low budget, we chose a cheap ____ instead of a fancy hotel.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The budget travelers decided to stay in a ____ to save money on their trip across Europe.