Hall
room in a house or a building.
This is either a long, narrow room which serves purely as an access to other rooms. 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.
The term hall can be used to refer 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.
In German speaking areas, Hall can also be a town name, where the name refers to the halls where the salt was extracted from saline solutions. 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) Hall in Tirol, which used to be called Solbad Hall from 1938 to 1974.
