Boardinghouses

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A type of establishment that provides lodging and meals for individuals, often featuring shared facilities
2. A residence where guests or tenants rent rooms and receive meals, typically in a communal setting
3. A housing option catering to transient individuals or workers, usually with common dining areas and shared living spaces

Etymology: "Boardinghouses" is simply the plural of "boardinghouse," so its story is the story of the singular form. A boardinghouse is a house where lodgers pay for a room together with regular meals, the word "board" in the sense of food supplied for payment. The compound joins "board," meaning the provision of meals, with "house," and the older sense of "board" as food goes back to the idea of a table or a plank on which meals were served. The plural adds only the ending "-s," which marks more than one such establishment. Because the noun names a type of building and the people who run it, the plural is used whenever several houses of this kind are meant, as in discussions of urban lodging or of the workers who once filled them.