inn

Any establishment where travellers can procure lodging, food, and drink.

Noun

  1. Any establishment where travellers can procure lodging, food, and drink.
    • [H]ow much more agreeable to himself to get into snug quarters in a chateau, [...] rather than take up with the miserable lodgement, and miserable fare of a country inn. - 1824, Geoffrey Crayon [pseudonym; Washington...
    • One morning I had been driven to the precarious refuge afforded by the steps of the inn, after rejecting offers from the Celebrity to join him in a variety of amusements. But even here I was not free from interruption,...

    Synonyms: hotel inn lodging lodging house

  2. A tavern.

    Synonyms: alehouse boozer boozing ken bousing ken drinker drinkery gargle-factory gin joint groggery local nineteenth hole pot-house pub public house rummery saloon tavern watering hole

  3. One of the colleges (societies or buildings) in London, for students of the law barristers.
    • the Inns of Court the Inns of Chancery Serjeants’ Inns
  4. The town residence of a nobleman or distinguished person.
    • Leicester Inn
  5. A place of shelter; hence, dwelling, residence, abode.
    • But nowe ſadde Winter welked hath the day, / And Phœbus weary of his yerely taſ-ke: / Yſtabled hath his ſteedes in lowlye laye / And taken vp his ynne in Fiſhes haſ-ke. - 1579, Immeritô [pseudonym; Edmund Spenser],...
    • Therefore with me ye may take vp your In / For this ſame night. - 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 33, page 12:

Origin

From Middle English in, inn, from Old English inn (“a dwelling, house, chamber, lodging”); akin to Icelandic inni (“a dwelling place, home, abode”), Faroese inni (“home”).

Forms

inns

Derived

coaching inn coach inn Cross Inn inmate innful innholder innkeeper innkeeping innless innlike innyard motor inn New Inn no room at the inn posting inn Tram Inn

Verb

  1. To take lodging; to lodge or house oneself.
    • But where do you intend to inn to-night? - 1714 March 15 (Gregorian calendar), Joseph Addison, “The Free-holder: No. 22. Thursday, March 5. [1714.]”, in The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison, Esq; […], volume...
    • We inned at the signe of the Swan. - circa 1570, Foxe, A. & M. (1596), 1554/2
    • I never innd in the Towne but once. - 1606, Sir G. Goosecappe I, iii, in Bullen O. Pl. III
  2. To lodge or house (someone or something).
    • I have but Inn'd my horse since, master Cockstone. - 2018 [1607], Thomas Middleton, Michaelmas term and a trick to catch the old one, Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, →ISBN, page 27:
    • These Inn'd themselves all Night in Knights-bridge Fields. - 1710, New Map Trav. High Church Apostle, 7, quoted in 1901, James Augustus Henry Murray, A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles: part 1. H (1901),...

Forms

inns inning inned

Related

bed and breakfast guesthouse hostel hotel motel