motel
(məʊˈtɛl)
[f. motor n. and a. + hotel n.]
A hotel catering primarily for motorists, spec. one comprising self-contained accommodation with adjacent parking space. Also attrib. and Comb.
| 1925 Hotel Monthly Mar. 37/2 The Milestone Interstate Corporation..proposes to build and operate a chain of motor hotels between San Diego and Seattle, the hotels to have the name ‘Motel’. 1931 Sociology & Social Research XV. 372 The new kind of cottage hotel (e.g., ‘Motel’), luxuriously furnished and served like any other hotel, but placed directly on the highway. 1947 A. Huxley Let. 14 Nov. (1969) 575 From the Blue Bird Motel in Little Rock, Ark, where we have been held up by torrential rains, I take this opportunity of telling you how grateful we all are. 1950 Archit. Rev. CVIII. 394 The motel is a new kind of hotel; like an hotel it has an attached restaurant and various services that earlier and more primitive sorts of roadside hostelries omit. 1955 Times 28 June 5/7 Although the ‘motel’ is still regarded as a novelty in the United Kingdom, an establishment of that kind was opened (and is still operating) at Boroughbridge..some time before the war. 1958 Times 24 Nov. (Canada Suppl.) p. viii/6 He has almost no contact with..the motel employees. Ibid. p. viii/7 The motel business is a field for individual..enterprise. 1962 Listener 25 Oct. 692/3 The vast motel-resort..now in the process of erection outside Seoul. 1970 Homes & Gardens June 150/1 In a motel the car is meant to be beside your room, but is not invariably. 1970 New Yorker 10 Oct. 141/1 A motelkeeper..was serving our breakfast. 1974 Washington Post 11 May E23/1 The oldest motel in America is alive and well..in San Luis Obispo, Calif. Ibid., The establishment..opened Dec. 12, 1925, as the Motel Inn. |
Hence moˈtel v. intr., to stay at a motel; moˈtelland (nonce-wd.), the realm of motels; moˈtelier, the owner of a motel; moˈtelled a., provided with motels.
| 1959 Guardian 6 Nov. 8/3 He, the over-fastidious European, is dragged by her through the appalling delights of motelland. 1959 S. H. Courtier Death in Dream Time i. 5 A motelier's aspirations. 1963 Economist 17 Aug. 595/1 The conventional hotel trade from whose custom, as American moteliers..have found out, the growth must be drawn. 1965 Punch 1 Dec. 798/1, I drove through twenty-seven states with a freedom and foot-loose mobility unknown in a nation so thinly motelled as Britain. 1968 G. De Fraga Murder at Cookout xii. 56 They're motelling in Canberra for a night or two. 1972 Sydney Morning Herald 26 Aug. 37/3 Tasmanian motelier Four Seasons Motels Ltd increased profit by 14 per cent. |