hall

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(hôl) pronunciation
n.
  1. A corridor or passageway in a building.
  2. A large entrance room or vestibule in a building; a lobby.
    1. A building for public gatherings or entertainments.
    2. The large room in which such events are held.
  3. A building used for the meetings, entertainments, or living quarters of a fraternity, sorority, church, or other social or religious organization.
    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.
  4. The main house on a landed estate.
    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.



1. The main room of a medieval or post-medieval house that served as the center of family life, usually combining the functions of a kitchen, dining room, living room, and workroom for activities such as spinning, sewing, and candle making; often called a keeping room; also see hall-and-parlor plan.
2. An imposing entrance hall; also called a living hall.
3. A large room for assembly, entertainment, and the like.
4. A small, relatively primitive dwelling having a one-room plan.
5. A manor house.
6. A corridor.



[Co]

1. Chief room of a house, mainly used for ceremonial and domestic life. With the decline in communal life since the Middle Ages, the term has been transferred to denote a lobby entrance.

2. A large single-roomed building used for domestic accommodation and ceremonial or communal purposes.

hall, a communicating passageway or, in medieval buildings, the large main room. In the feudal castle of N Europe it was a single apartment, and in it lord and retainers lounged, ate, and slept. From the hearth in its center the smoke rose to an outlet in the roof. At one end was the raised dais reserved for the master and those of his own rank. With developing amenities extra spaces were added for cooking and sleeping, and the hall advanced beyond its early rude and unfinished appearance. In English manor houses of the 14th and 15th cent. the characteristic great hall was covered by a fine open-timber roof, heated by one or more huge fireplaces, and lighted with lofty windows often arranged in deep, projecting bays. Westminster Hall, part of the ancient royal palace commenced in the 11th cent. and rebuilt in the 14th cent., was the most splendid. By the 17th cent., with the addition of drawing room, library, and bedrooms, the hall of the English house was no longer of great size and dominance. The English colleges of the Middle Ages and Renaissance also had halls or commons, chiefly for dining, that were architecturally similar to the baronial examples. Some were covered with fine fan vaults, others with timber roofs as at Christ Church, Oxford, perhaps the most splendid hall next to Westminster. The various guilds of N Europe had their halls, especially impressive in Flanders, e.g., the cloth halls at Bruges, Brussels, and Ypres. In Italy communal independence produced the remarkable series of local civic halls, often with imposing towers, as at Siena and Florence. The word hall came to be used in the title of many great English houses (Haddon Hall) and similarly in that of some Southern estates in the American colonies.

Bibliography

See J. A. Gotch, Growth of the English House (1909).


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pronunciation

IN BRIEF: n. - A large entrance or reception room or area; A college or university building containing living quarters for students.

pronunciation The Hall was the place where the great lord used to eat.

Tutor's tip: What did Saul "haul" (carry or cart) to the small "hall" (chamber or gallery)?

LearnThatWord.com is a free vocabulary and spelling program where you only pay for results!

sign description: Both flat hands with palms facing each other move forward parallel to each other.




Random House Word Menu:

categories related to 'hall'

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Random House Word Menu by Stephen Glazier
For a list of words related to hall, see:

  See crossword solutions for the clue Hall.
The Marwar Hall at Umaid Bhawan Palace, Jodhpur, India
Hall in religious buildings : prayer hall of the Great Mosque of Kairouan, in Kairouan, Tunisia
A hallway at the Royal York Hotel
Hallway during and after construction in an apartment building in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
An outdoor passageway near the Alamo

In architecture, a hall is fundamentally a relatively large space enclosed by a roof and walls. In the Iron Age, a mead hall was such a simple building and was the residence of a lord and his retainers. Later, rooms were partitioned from it, so that today the hall of a house is the space inside the front door through which the rooms are reached....

This:

  • Deriving from the above, a hall is often the term used to designate a British or Irish country house.
  • In later medieval Europe, the main room of a castle or manor house was the great hall.
  • Where the hall inside the front door of a house is elongated, it may be called a passage, corridor, or hallway.
  • In a medieval building, the hall was where the fire was kept. With time, its functions as dormitory, kitchen, parlour and so on were divided off to separate rooms or, in the case of the kitchen, a separate building.

On the same principle:

Similarly:

  • A hall is also a building consisting largely of a principal room, that is rented out for meetings and social affairs. It may be privately or government-owned, such as a function hall owned by one company used for weddings and cotillions (organized and run by the same company on a contractual basis) or a community hall available for rent to anyone.
  • In religious architecture, as in Islamic architecture, the prayer hall is a large room dedicated to the practice of the worship.[1] (example : the prayer hall of the Great Mosque of Kairouan in Tunisia)

Following a line of similar development:

  • In office buildings and larger buildings (theatres, cinemas etc.), the entrance hall is generally known as the foyer (the French for fire-place). The atrium, a name sometimes used in public buildings for the entrance hall, was the central courtyard of a Roman house.
Firehall (London, Ontario) in 1923


References

  1. ^ Stanford Anderson and Colin St. John Wilson, The Oxford companion to architecture, Volume 1, Oxford University Press, 2009, page 477

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - hall, vestibule, forhal, entre, korridor, herregård

idioms:

  • hall of fame    mindehal
  • hall of residence    kollegium

Nederlands (Dutch)
hal, portaal, gang, overloop, zaal, rechts-/ eetzaal, openbaar gebouw, studentenhuis, groot herenhuis, gildenhuis, aankomst-/ vertrekhal

Français (French)
n. - hall, couloir, salle, (Admin) mairie, (Aviat) hall (d'arrivée/de départ), (Univ) résidence universitaire, (Univ) réfectoire, manoir

idioms:

  • hall of fame    Panthéon
  • hall of residence    résidence universitaire, foyer d'étudiants

Deutsch (German)
n. - Halle, Diele, Korridor, Herrenhaus, Saal, Studentenheim, Speisesaal

idioms:

  • hall of fame    Ruhmeshalle
  • hall of residence    Studentenwohnheim

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - αίθουσα, δημόσιο κτήριο, τραπεζαρία, χολ, είσοδος, προθάλαμος, αίθουσα συγκεντρώσεων ή συναυλιών

idioms:

  • hall of fame    μέγαρο όπου εκτίθενται προτομές και πορτραίτα διασημοτήτων, ομάδα διασημοτήτων
  • hall of residence    (σε σχολές) χώρος διαμονής των φοιτητών, φοιτητική εστία

Italiano (Italian)
atrio, ingresso, sala, casa dello studente

idioms:

  • entrance hall    atrio
  • hall of fame    aula dei personaggi illustri
  • hall of residence    casa dello studente

Português (Portuguese)
n. - saguão (m), salão (m)

idioms:

  • hall of fame    salão (m) comemorativo em Nova Iorque
  • hall of residence    residência (f) universitária

Русский (Russian)
большое помещение, университетская столовая, административное здание, холл, вестибюль, помещичья усадьба

idioms:

  • hall of fame    галерея с бюстами выдающихся людей в Нью-Йорке
  • hall of residence    студенческое общежитие

Español (Spanish)
n. - vestíbulo, hall, corredor, pasillo, entrada, sala, salón, casa de estudiantes, sala de espera de los aeropuertos

idioms:

  • hall of fame    Selección de personas que se han distinguido en algún campo o actividad
  • hall of residence    colegio mayor, residencia de estudiantes

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - entré, sal, herrgård, klubb(lokal), (mindre) college, (middag i) collegematsal, (pl.) varieté(teater)

中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
门厅, 会堂, 走廊

idioms:

  • hall of fame    名人纪念馆
  • hall of residence    学校宿舍楼

中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 門廳, 會堂, 走廊

idioms:

  • hall of fame    名人紀念館
  • hall of residence    學校宿舍樓

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 복도, 현관의 넓은 방, 홀, 강당

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 玄関の広間, 玄関, 廊下, 公的な建物, ホール, 事務所, 寮, 特別会館, 集会場, 大邸宅, 大広間, 会堂

idioms:

  • hall of fame    栄誉の殿堂, 栄誉殿堂, 殿堂入りした人びと
  • hall of residence    寮

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) قصر ملك أو نبيل أو حجرة الجلوس, الرئيسيه فيه, بيت ريفي لصاحب أطيان, مبنى فخم لأغراض عامه, مبنى في جامعه لغرض معين, كليه أو جزء من كليه في بعض الجامعات, قاعه الطعام العامه في اللغه الإنجليزيه, ردهه, رواق, قاعه كبيرة للإجتماعات‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮אולם, פרוזדור, חדר-אוכל, בית, מעון, בניין, בית-אחוזה גדול (בריטניה), בית ציבורי גדול‬


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