Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A building for housing a number of persons, as at a school or resort.
  • noun A room providing sleeping quarters for a number of persons.
  • noun A community whose inhabitants commute to a nearby city for employment and recreation.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A place, building, or room to sleep in.
  • noun That part of a boarding-school or other institution where the inmates sleep, usually a large room, either open or divided by low partitions, or a series of rooms opening upon a common hall or corridor: in American colleges, sometimes an entire building divided into sleeping-rooms.
  • noun A burial-place; a cemetery. See cemetery, which has the same etymological meaning.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A sleeping room, or a building containing a series of sleeping rooms; a sleeping apartment capable of containing many beds; esp., one connected with a college or boarding school.
  • noun obsolete A burial place.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A room containing a number of beds (and often some other furniture and/or utilities) for sleeping, often applied to student and backpacker accommodation of this kind. Common abbreviation: dorm
  • noun A building or part of a building which houses students, soldiers, monks etc. who sleep there and use communal further facilities.
  • noun Short for dormitory town, a suburban or rural settlement housing city workers

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a large sleeping room containing several beds
  • noun a college or university building containing living quarters for students

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English dormitorie, from Latin dormītōrium, from dormītōrius, of sleep, from dormītus, past participle of dormīre, to sleep.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin dormitorium ("a sleeping-room"), neuter of dormitorius ("belonging to sleep"), dormitor ("a sleeper"), from dormire ("to sleep").

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Examples

  • -- The Wall Street Journal: a student-run news service reported that five students -- two women and three men -- were killed Sunday night in dormitory raids by Basij forces at Tehran University.

    Iran Election Live-Blogging (Tuesday June 16) The Huffington Post News Team 2009

  • The rooms are light and airy, although the dormitory is rather filled up with beds.

    Work Camp 13048 L 2010

  • The fact that the vision occurred in the dormitory is only mentioned in passing and is not of particular interest to the author.

    Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany 2008

  • Now you get exersize on jobs and eat in dormitory hall with other Mellican worker!

    Mayor Bloomberg, Buy Those Handguns 2007

  • Evidently it was known as the dormitory to the end of its days.

    Ishmael Barbara Hambly 2000

  • Evidently it was known as the dormitory to the end of its days.

    Ishmael Barbara Hambly 2000

  • By the time daylight began to creep into that big old room that everybody was calling a dormitory, I had already been planning for a good two hours how I was going to get out of Wiltwyck.

    Manchild in the Promised Land Claude Brown 1965

  • It is what we call a dormitory municipality: the residents go there to live and elsewhere to work.

    Metropolitan Toronto 1953

  • She found that the dormitory was the most secluded space in female houses, while in men's houses, the sacristy held that position.

    Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany 2008

  • So it's quite possible that he was responsible for both the shooting at that dormitory, which is called West AJ Hall, and as well the shooting at Norris Hall, about two and a half hours later, at which some 30 people were killed.

    CNN Transcript Apr 17, 2007 2007

Comments

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  • Dirty room.

    February 6, 2016