hostel

noun

1. A commercial overnight lodging place, with dormitory accommodation and shared facilities, especially a youth hostel.

   “a rundown hostel”

   “The rest, around the hostel fire, / Their drowsy limbs recline; / For pillow, underneath each head, / The quiver and the targe were laid: / Deep slumbering on the hostel floor, / Oppressed with toil and ale, / they snore: […]”

2. A temporary refuge for the homeless providing a bed and sometimes food.
3. (obsolete)A small, unendowed college in Oxford or Cambridge.

   “There are also in Oxford certeine hostels or hals, which may rightwell be called by the names of colleges , if it were not that there is more libertie in them , than is to be seen in the other”

4. (obsolete)A public hotel.

   “Immediately at hand was a small, mean public-house - one of those dingy establishments that seem to express, by their morbid and retiring appearance, a certain anxiety to escape the eye of the police - and into the parlour of this hostel Quin promptly led the way.”

5. (South-Africa, South-Asia)A university or school dormitory, a place of accommodation for students.

verb

1. (intransitive)To stay in a hostel during one's travels.
2. (transitive)To lodge (a person) in a hostel.