Other forms: dormitories
A dormitory is the shared student building full of small bedrooms. Live in a dormitory, the dormitory block, a dormitory town.
In American use it means the whole hall of residence and in British use a room with several beds, which is a real difference. A dormitory town is one whose residents work elsewhere and only sleep there. The Latin dormire means to sleep.
1noundormitoryA shared sleeping building or room.
“Twenty girls slept in the long school dormitory, each in a narrow bed.”
dormitory is a building.
Also accepted in games: dorm
Latin dormitorium means a sleeping room, from dormire, to sleep. Dormant and dormouse come from the same sleeping.
Latin
dormītōrium — a sleeping-room
Middle English
dormitory
English, today
dormitory
Built from
From Middle English dormitory, dormytory, dormytorye, borrowed from Latin dormītōrium (“a sleeping-room”), from dormiō (“to sleep”). a doublet of dormitorium and dorter.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA