Motel

How to spell motel

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce motel

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does motel mean?

1. nounA roadside hotel designed primarily for motorists, typically with rooms accessible from an adjacent car park.

Motel in a sentence

• They pulled off the highway and checked into a cheap motel for the night.

• The motel offered free parking right outside each room.

Where does motel come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word motel is a twentieth century blend, sometimes called a portmanteau, formed by fusing the first part of motor with the ending of hotel. It was coined in the United States in 1925, when the architect Arthur Heineman opened the Milestone Mo-Tel in San Luis Obispo, California, to serve the growing flood of car travellers needing somewhere to stop overnight on long highway journeys. The idea behind the name was simple and literal: a hotel built for motorists, usually with rooms opening directly onto a parking area. The element motor itself traces back to the Latin motor, meaning 'a mover', from movere, 'to move', while hotel comes through French from the Latin hospitale, a place that gives lodging to guests. Because the word simply stitches two familiar words together, its spelling is regular and rarely causes trouble; the only thing to remember is that it keeps a single t and a single l.

How the word is built

• mo- (from motor)
• -tel (from hotel); a blend of the two words