Hall

Hall has several meanings.

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It is a term often used to refer to several different types of room in a house or a building. This is often a long, narrow room which serves purely as an access to other rooms, similar to a gallery. This type of hall is also called a corridor, a passage, or a hallway. As an extension of this, the front entranceway or entrance room of the house is also often called the hall because it serves as an access to the main part of the house (also called the entry hall). In office buildings and larger buildings (theatres, cinemas etc), the entry room is generally known as the foyer or the atrium.

In medieval England the main room of a castle or manor house was called the great hall. There were similar rooms in other European countries.

A hall is also a building that is rented out for meetings and social affairs. It may be privately or government-owned, such as a function hall owned by one company used for weddings and cotillions (organized and run by the same company on a contractual basis) or a community hall available for rent to anyone.

The term hall can be used to refer to the houses of medieval kings and nobles, and to some kinds of building in their entirety, for example a Meeting hall, or a Church hall. Again, presumably this is because the building serves as a gathering place and it is generally a large empty space with minimal furnishings and decoration. Many buildings at colleges and universities are formally titled "________ Hall", typically being named after distinguished alumni or other persons associated with the school, e.g. "Nassau Hall" at Princeton University.

At colleges in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, Hall referred to the dining hall for students, with High Table at one end for fellows. Typically, at "Formal Hall", gowns are worn for diner during the evening, whereas for "informal Hall" they are not.

Many Livery Companies (e.g., in the City of London) have a Hall that is their headquarters and meeting place.

In German speaking areas, Hall can also be (part of) a town name, like Halle, where the name refers to hall, the celtic word for salt. Hall is the short form of the name of: (i) the medieval German town Schwäbisch Hall, where it was its only name prior to 1933 (ii) the Austrian town Hall in Tirol near Innsbruck, which used to be called Solbad Hall from 1938 to 1974, (iii) Hallstatt in Austria which gave its name to the Celtic Hallstatt culture.

Hall is also a surname.

See also