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Forum_mail Posted 19 years ago
Vocabulary

hall vs a hall

0 Why is there no 'a' before 'hall' in these sentences? :02br
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001. For a brief time they had shared a room in hall.02br
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002. He moves from hotel to hall in sleek limousines. (and btw. - shouldn't there be 'a' before 'hotel' ???)02br
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00I don't get the idea.0-
  

Top answer

01. I think this should be 'in halls', and is a BrE expression meaning university accommodation. It is short for 'halls of residence'.

— Lil' Ruby Rose

  • 01.
  • I think this should be 'in halls', and is a BrE expression meaning university accommodation.
  • It is short for 'halls of residence'.
  • 02br 02br 002.
  • In this sentence, the writer is poetically describing someone's lifestyle.
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6 Answers
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01. I think this should be 'in halls', and is a BrE expression meaning university accommodation. It is short for 'halls of residence'. 02br
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002. In this sentence, the writer is poetically describing someone's lifestyle. He means it in the sense of moving from place to place rather than moving from a specific hotel to a specific hall.0-
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0 but these two examples come from Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English... there shouldn't be any mistake in them... I simply copied them by "copy" and "paste" from the cd version of LDOCE...0-
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0I'd always thought of it as 'halls' as well but a quick google came up with 01a05000/ 02a00.02br
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00Halls of residence - living in hall.0250hrefhttp://www3.imperial.ac.uk/residences/studentaccommodation/livinginhall
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0 well... but I still don't understand why there is no 'a' before 'hotel' and 'hall' ...0-
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0 Yes, this is literary. 02br
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00 For the OP: the "a" insn't used because the author means "01i00he's moving from lots of hotels to lots of halls, or he's moving from a multiplicity of hotels to a multiciplity of halls02i00" in this literary fashion. 0-
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0For #1, it seems to me that 'in hall' has the same idiomatic status as 'in hospital' and 'in school'.0-
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