1. A corridor or passageway in a building.
2. A large entrance room or vestibule in a building; a lobby.
3. 1. A building for public gatherings or entertainments.
   2. The large room in which such events are held.
4. A building used for the meetings, entertainments, or living quarters of a fraternity, sorority, church, or other social or religious organization.
5. 1. A building belonging to a school, college, or university that provides classroom, dormitory, or dining facilities.
   2. A large room in such a building.
   3. The group of students using such a building: The entire hall stayed up late studying.
   4. Chiefly British. A meal served in such a building.
6. The main house on a landed estate.
7. 1. The castle or house of a medieval monarch or noble.
   2. The principal room in such a castle or house, used for dining, entertaining, and sleeping.

[Middle English halle, large residence, from Old English heall.]

WORD HISTORY   The halls of academe and city hall remind us that what we commonly mean by the word hall, "a passageway, an entrance room," represents a shrunken version of what hall once commonly designated. Going back to the Indo-European root *kel-, "to cover," the Old English word heall, ancestor of our hall, referred to "a large place covered by a roof, whether a royal residence, official building, large private residence, or large room in a residence where the public life of the household is carried on." These senses and related ones are still in use, as attested by compounds such as music hall and study hall. Our common use of the term hall for a vestibule or a corridor harks back to medieval times when the hall was the main public room of a residence and people lived much less privately than now. As private rooms in houses took on the importance they have today, the hall lost its function. Hall also had come to mean any large room, and the vestibule was at one time one of the main sitting rooms in a house, but this sort of room has largely disappeared also, and hall has become the designation for the small vestibule of today as well as for an entrance passage or any passageway.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.