hall
/hɔːl/ noun, proper noun
Forms halls
- noun A corridor; a hallway. “The drinking fountain was out in the hall.”
- noun A large meeting room. “The hotel had three halls for conferences, and two were in use by the convention.”
- noun A manor house (originally because a magistrate's court was held in the hall of his mansion). “The duke lived in a great hall overlooking the sea.”
- noun A building providing student accommodation at a university. “The student government hosted several social events so that students from different halls would intermingle.”
- noun The principal room of a secular medieval building.
- noun (obsolete) Cleared passageway through a crowd, as for dancing.
- noun A place for special professional education, or for conferring professional degrees or licences. “a Divinity Hall; Apothecaries' Hall”
- noun (India) A living room.
- proper noun A British and Scandinavian topographic surname from Middle English for someone who lived in or near a hall.
- proper noun A surname from German for someone associated with a salt mine.
- proper noun An Anglo-Norman surname.
- proper noun A village in Gelderland, Netherlands.
- proper noun Former name of Las Lomas, a CDP in California.
- proper noun An unincorporated community in Morgan County, Indiana.
- proper noun An unincorporated community in Granite County, Montana.
- proper noun A hamlet and census-designated place in Ontario County, New York.
- noun (UK, rail transport) Hall class, a class of steam locomotive used on the GWR.
Synonyms
hallway anteroom antechamber entrance hall foyer lobby vestibule dormitory dorm residence hall student residence manor hall Radclyffe Hall Marguerite Radclyffe Hall G. Stanley Hall Granville Stanley Hall Charles Martin Hall Charles Francis Hall Asaph Hall mansion mansion house manse residence
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English halle (“hall”), from Old English heall (“hall, dwelling, house, palace, temple, law-court”), from Proto-West Germanic *hallu (“hall”), from Proto-Germanic *hallō (“hall”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱel- (“to hide, conceal”).
Cognate with Scots hall, haw (“hall”), Dutch hal (“hall”), German Halle (“hall”), Danish hal (“hall, sports centre”), Faroese høll (“hall, palace”), Icelandic höll (“palace”), Norwegian hall (“hall”), Swedish hall (“hall”), Latin cella (“room, cell”), Sanskrit शाला (śā́lā, “house, mansion, hall”). Doublet of cell and cella.
* As an English, Scottish, Irish, German, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish surname: all from the noun hall. The name was likely reinforced by similar sounding words such as Swedish häll (“rock slab”).
* As a Chinese surname, variant Romanization of 何, 賀 /贺 (hè), see He.
** (locomotive): The locomotives were named after English and Welsh country houses with 'Hall' in their titles.
** (British and Scandinavian surnames): From the buildings, halls
Webster’s 1913
- noun A building or room of considerable size and stateliness, used for public purposes; as, Westminster Hall, in London.
- noun A name given to many manor houses because the magistrate's court was held in the hall of his mansion; a chief mansion house. Cowell.
Etymology [OE. halle, hal, AS. heal, heall; akin to D. hal, OS. & OHG. halla, G. halle, Icel. hölt, and prob. from a root meaning, to hide, conceal, cover. See Hell, Helmet.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “hall”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details