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youth hostel

youth hostel

3 3.0
A cheap place where young travelers stay and share rooms and kitchens
  • noun
  • /juːθ ˈhɒstəl/
translation icon : albergue juvenil
  • After a year in Spain, I moved to Italy and worked in an international youth hostel in Rome.
  • stay at a youth hostel
  • youth hostels, public campgrounds

Examples

  • Travelers looking for a cheaper option can preferably opt to stay at any of the youth hostels in New York City.

    Blog text (30)
  • This "Job Journey" is being offered to young people in Soderhamn, who can receive a ticket to Oslo and a month's rent at a youth hostel (for 20 a night).

    Blog text (34)
  • This is our second night at the youth hostel.

  • I asked him, "where is the youth hostel?"

  • You meet so many awesome people in the youth hostels.

  • Crash at a youth hostel or something.

  • The rooms of the youth hostels in New York City are small and are equipped with standard facilities like a bed and a TV.

    Blog text (30)
  • I made it to le Cinque Terre, walked to the only youth hostel there, asked for a bed, and they told me they were booked out that day.

    Blog text (8)
  • I said that they (my presumed cousins, the pigs) probably wouldn't even have the generosity to offer me a bed, and I knew that in Lyon I could at least crash in a youth hostel.

    Fiction book (2001)
  • During our trip, we found that the best place to meet other travelers was at the youth hostel.

Synonyms

hostel
vsyouth hostel
34 2.1

A cheap place for travelers or students to sleep, often with shared rooms and facilities

adds supervision and a stronger focus on communal living and affordability
student lodging
vsyouth hostel
2.9

A cheap place where students or young people stay on trips with a host

is for young travellers more broadly and stresses shared communal spaces
lodgings
vsyouth hostel
3.3

Temporary rooms you rent to stay in for a short time

is more explicitly supervised, cheaper, and aimed at young travellers
accommodation house
vsyouth hostel
3.8

A building that offers rooms for people to stay for a short time

is specifically inexpensive, supervised, and designed for young travelling guests

Surface Forms

youth hostel singular
youth hostels plural

Morphology

youth + hostel

The meaning of 'youth hostel' is transparently compositional: it denotes a 'hostel' (budget accommodation) intended for 'youth' (young people). This noun–noun modification pattern is common cross-linguistically (e.g., Jugendherberge, auberge de jeunesse), so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can readily infer the MWE's meaning.

Etymology

The name youth hostel combines youth, meaning 'young people', and hostel, meaning 'a simple place to stay'. One popular story says these places began as cheap houses where young travelers slept in shared rooms and were looked after, so the name now means a supervised, inexpensive place with shared facilities for young people.