hotel
hostel
inn
motel
hound
pointer
retriever
setter
terrier
necessary by the sweltering noonday heat. Torrid is more matter-of-fact than the preceding pair, referring more to climate than to weather: the torrid zone; the Congo’s torrid season. Of this group, both sultry and torrid have metaphorical uses referring to emotional excitement. Sultry suggests passionate moodiness or intensity, torrid a more specifically sexual context: the sultry beauties in his harem; a torrid affair.
Feverish, most literally, refers to a high body temperature: He felt faint and feverish. Metaphorically, it can refer to haste and confusion: feverish attempts to meet the deadline. See humid, passionate, warm.
Antonyms: cold .
These words refer to buildings or groups of buildings that are set up to provide living quarters for customers, especially on a temporary basis. Hotel usually refers to a single building, large or small, in which rooms or suites are rented out on a fixed basis: hotels jammed by those pouring into town for the convention. Although the word most often suggests accommodations for travelers or transients, it may also apply to more permanent arrangements: She had lived in the resident hotel for a decade. Hostel represents an older borrowing from the same source word as hotel and once meant the same thing. Now it almost universally refers to one of a chain of lodging houses for young people on cycling or hiking tours: He planned his itinerary so that each night would put him near a different hostel.
Motel is a portmanteau word for motor hotel ; it refers to a roadside building or, often, a group of buildings, such as a cluster of cabins, where people traveling by car may obtain lodgings: an attempt to choose among several motels that lay strung out along the highway. Inn also refers to a roadside hotel, but suggests a much more rustic setting than motel and is a place where travelers may obtain either food or lodgings, or both. Since the word has an archaic and convivial quality, it is often used pretentiously to refer to any sort of mere restaurant: your country inn in the heart of the city. Sometimes it serves as a genteel substitute for motel: a motor inn. See house, lodgings.
These words all refer to dogs used in hunting or tracking a quarry. Hound is by far the most general of these. Used loosely, it can merely be a more formal substitute for dog itself, giving an archaic or pretentious tone; used specifically, it can refer to a grouping of specific breeds. Between these two extremes, the word would most often be understood as referring to dogs that track quarry by scent or sight: They brought out hounds to track down the escaped convict; the packs of hounds used in fox hunting. Metaphorically, the word can suggest someone fixated on the pursuit of something: an autograph hound.
The remaining words are restricted to describing ways that hunting or sporting dogs track or capture their quarry. More specifically, of course, each may indicate a precise breed of dog or groups of such breeds. Pointer refers to a dog that signals the presence of quarry, such as birds, by fixing its body with tail uplifted and nose directed toward the prey. The setter acts similarly, but adopts a sitting position in indicating its prey. A retriever is any dog that brings back shot or killed animals to its master, whether over land or water. Terrier refers to a dog that digs up burrowing prey, such as gophers or moles. But this word has become more and more attached to particular breeds, valued as pets, without indicating this hunting activity at all. See animal.
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These words refer to structures in which people live or work. House refers generally to any sort of structure meant to be lived in. Though it may classically call up an image of a free-standing, one-family structure of moderate size, it can apply to a whole spectrum of habitations, from those considerably more to those considerably less extensive than this midpoint: the baronet’s fifty-room country house', They bought a onestory semi-detached house in the new development; a rickety one-room house built of unchinked logs; rows of grimy tenement houses. In informal use, the word frequently refers to the place one lives, even though it is a room or apartment or some other division of a larger structure: She takes the elevator to the tenth floor whenever she goes to play in Janie’s house.
Dwelling is a more formal substitute for house and has fewer connotations, referring solely to any structure (or less often, to part of one) where people live. Its formality, however, makes it sound odd in other contexts than sociological discussion or the parlance of the construction industry: a study that compared children who lived in two-family dwellings with those in apartment houses', contractors who are equipped to mass-produce middle-income dwellings on a vast scale. Even in these uses, the word may sound like an unnecessarily inflated evasion of house. The word also can have an aura of faded lyricism or religiosity, in imitation of its valid use in the King James Bible: the simple dwellings of upright men.
Roof and shelter are more informal and more colorful substitutes for house than dwelling, both stressing the minimal factors of utility or protection given by any sort of structure. Roof is a synecdoche for the whole house', two families sharing the same roof. But it may suggest temporary accommodations rather than permanent living quarters: anxious to get a roof over their heads by nightfall. Shelter is useful as a general word with which to group together all living structures, permanent or temporary: man’s basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter. It may even refer to any sort of protective retreat: a tree that provided shelter from the rain; to take shelter. Used as a specific reference to a particular structure, it is likely to suggest something rude or improvised: They collected driftwood to build a beach shelter. Housing is a general word referring to the supplying of or demand for living space of any sort: open housing', legislation in the areas of housing and education.
Building refers concretely to an actual structure, but it is not restricted, like house, to those designed or used as living space: farm buildings that included the farmhouse, a barn, and a silo. Premises is a technical term in insurance, legal, or criminological parlances. It may refer to a tract of land with buildings on it; to a house, building, or part of a house', or to the space occupied by a business: a policy insuring the premises against fire; suspicious characters seen on the premises. Sometimes it is used outside these contexts with comic effect: He got his golf clubs from the closet in the hope of getting off the premises without being seen. See home, hotel, lodgings.
These words are comparable in the broad sense of having an interest in or concern for the welfare and happiness of others. Humane, the most comprehensive of them, implies considerateness in our dealings not only with people but with all living creatures and in situations involving either: a humane judge; a humane treatment of animals; a humane management policy. Benign carries the suggestion of a mild, sometimes faintly condescending gentleness and tolerance, with a secondary mean
house
building
dwelling
housing
premises
roof
shelter
humane
benign
charitable
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