The "m" in motel refers to a motorcar. The "h" in hotel, an older term, is presumably a reference to a horse.
The "m" in motel refers to a motorcar. The "h" in hotel, an older term, is presumably a reference to a horse.
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Hotel comes from the French word hôtel and that word is is defined as places providing care. Really the h in hotel would be hospitality but really that is not the case.
You can go further back. The Old French ostel is from the Latin hospitale, meaning "inn" or "large house", which is the noun form of the adjective hospitalis, from hospes, meaning "host".
So the H in hotel is for host, kind of.
(you can go further back into the theoretical language Proto-Indo-European, but there's no written record of it, so no letter H that we know of)
Very cool so really host is the root meaning as far as the written record shows.
And O-circumflex “ô” in French indicates an elided “s”. hô = hos