hall
/hɔl/ noun A1- A corridor; a hallway. · The drinking fountain was out in the hall.
- A large meeting room. · The hotel had three halls for conferences, and two were in use by the convention.
- A manor house (originally because a magistrate's court was held in the hall of his mansion). · The duke lived in a great hall overlooking the sea.
- A building providing student accommodation at a university. · The student government hosted several social events so that students from different halls would intermingle.
- The principal room of a secular medieval building.
- A place for special professional education, or for conferring professional degrees or licences. · a Divinity Hall; Apothecaries' Hall
- A living room.
- A college's canteen, which is often but not always coterminous with a traditional hall.
Plural halls
From the library
There was not a moment to be lost: away went Alice like the wind, and was just in time to hear it say, as it turned a corner, “Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it’s getting!” She was close behind it when she turned the corner, but the Rabbit was no longer to be seen: she found herself in a long, low hall, which was lit up by a row of lamps hanging from the roof.
There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked; and when Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to get out again.
Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid glass; there was nothing on it except a tiny golden key, and Alice’s first thought was that it might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but, alas!
How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the doorway; “and even if my head would go through,” thought poor Alice, “it would be of very little use without my shoulders.
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