Other forms: hostels
A hostel is a cheap place to sleep, often in shared rooms. A youth hostel, stay in a hostel, book a hostel bed.
Youth hostels were founded to give young people cheap access to the countryside, and the movement is about a century old. Beds are usually in dormitories with shared kitchens, which is why hostels are as much about meeting people as about saving money. A hostel is also emergency accommodation for homeless people, which is a quite different and serious use. Note hostelling; and that hostel, hotel and hospital are the same word.
1nounhostelA cheap place to sleep, often in shared rooms.
“A hostel bed costs about a quarter of a hotel room.”
hostel is cheap accommodation.
Old French hostel comes from Latin hospitale, a place for guests. Hostel and hotel are the same word arriving at different dates, which is why one is cheap and one is not.
Latin
hospitale — hospice
Old French
hostel
Middle English
hostel
English, today
hostel
Built from
From Middle English hostel, from Old French hostel, ostel, from Latin hospitale (“hospice”), from Classical Latin hospitalis (“hospitable”) itself from hospes (“host”) + -alis (“-al”). a 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).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA