Other forms: inns
An inn is a small old-fashioned hotel serving food and drink. A country inn, stay at the inn, the village inn.
It was the traveller's stop where a coach changed horses, which is why so many English inns stand at a day's ride apart along old roads. The name survives mostly on pub signs now. Note the Inns of Court in London, which are legal societies named from the lodgings their members once shared.
1nouninnA small old-fashioned hotel serving food and drink.
“We spent the night at a cosy old inn in the village.”
inn is a lodging house.
Old English inn meant a dwelling or lodging, from in. The sense of a public house for travellers followed.
Old English
inn — a dwelling, house, chamber, lodging
Middle English
in
English, today
inn
From Middle English in, inn, from Old English inn (“a dwelling, house, chamber, lodging”); akin to Icelandic inni (“a dwelling place, home, abode”), Faroese inni (“home”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA