noun, verb, slang ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A type of hotel or lodging establishment, often located near a major highway, which typically features a series of rooms whose entrances are immediately adjacent to a parking lot to facilitate convenient access to parked automobiles. also, attributive
2. 2
   a motor hotel wordnet
3. 3
   A low-cost short-stay hotel, often with hourly rates rather than daily rates, and notorious for permitting illicit sexual activities; love hotel.

Verb

1. 1
   To stay in a motel or motels. informal, intransitive

Synonyms

All synonyms

hot-sheet motelhotellove hotelno-tell motelroom by the hourtourist court

Example

More examples

"A motel is like a hotel only much smaller and is used mostly by people traveling by automobile."

Etymology

Blend of motor + hotel, from the original Motel Inn of San Luis Obispo in California, USA, established in 1925 by Arthur Heineman (1878–1974).

Related phrases

graybar motelhot-sheet motelno-tell motelroach motellove hotellow costmotor courtparking lottourist court

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.