Definition of "accommodation"

accommodation

/ə.ˌkɒm.ə.ˈdeɪ.ʃən/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural accommodations
1. (chiefly Britain, usually a mass noun) Lodging in a dwelling or similar living quarters afforded to travellers in hotels or on cruise ships, or prisoners, etc.
2. (physical) Adaptation or adjustment.
  1. (countable, uncountable, followed by to) The act of fitting or adapting, or the state of being fitted or adapted; adaptation; adjustment.
    Quotations
    It is true, the organization of the humane and animal Body, with accommodation to their several functions and offices, is certainly fitted with the most curious and exact Mechanism imaginable
    1677, Sir Matthew Hale, The Primitive Origination of Mankind: Considered and Examined According to the Light of Nature, page 49
  2. (countable, uncountable) A convenience, a fitting, something satisfying a need.
    Quotations
    ...and Lady Anne, for the present, felt as if Fanchette and her coach full of accommodations, heavy as they might once be supposed to be, were suddenly swallowed up in that awful sea, to which so many refractory spirits have been exorcised and consigned.
    1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVII, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1842, page 226
    Mr. Cooke had had a sloop yacht built at Far Harbor, the completion of which had been delayed, and which was but just delivered. […] The Maria had a cabin, which was finished in hard wood and yellow plush, and accommodations for keeping things cold.
    1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter X, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.
  3. (countable, physiology, biology) The adaptation or adjustment of an organism, organ, or part.
  4. (countable, medicine) The adjustment of the eye to a change of the distance from an observed object.
3. (personal) Adaptation or adjustment.
  1. (countable, uncountable) Willingness to accommodate; obligingness.
  2. (countable, uncountable) Adjustment of differences; state of agreement; reconciliation; settlement; compromise.
    Quotations
    1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volumes (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans
    Some of the recent literature on the Germanic settlements reads like an account of a tea party at the Roman vicarage. A shy newcomer to the village, who is a useful prospect for the cricket team, is invited in. There is a brief moment of awkwardness, while the host finds an empty chair and pours a fresh cup of tea; but the conversation, and village life, soon flow on. The accommodation that was reached between invaders and invaded in the fifth- and sixth-century West was very much more difficult, and more interesting, than this.
    2005, Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, page 82
  3. (countable) The application of a writer's language, on the ground of analogy, to something not originally referred to or intended.
    Quotations
    It is probable to my apprehension, that many of those quotations were intended by the writers of the New Testament as nothing more than accommodations.
    1794, William Paley, A View of the Evidences of Christianity, reprinted in 1818 by James Robertson, page 283
  4. (countable, commerce) A loan of money.
  5. (countable, commerce) An accommodation bill or note.
  6. (countable, law) An offer of substitute goods to fulfill a contract, which will bind the purchaser if accepted.
  7. (theology) An adaptation or method of interpretation which explains the special form in which the revelation is presented as unessential to its contents, or rather as often adopted by way of compromise with human ignorance or weakness.
4. (countable, geology) The place where sediments can make, or have made, a sedimentation.
5. (linguistics, sociolinguistics) Modification(s) to make one's way of communicating similar to others involved in a conversation or discourse.
  Quotations
  Pilots […] use the word fuselage whereas laypeople would more likely call the same "thing" the body of an aircraft. […] We have said above that speakers often signal that they belong to a certain group by making their language more similar to that of the other group members […] we thus adapt our language, dialect, accent, style and/or register to that of our addressee or addressees. This process is called speech accommodation. Among the reasons for accommodation may be our desire to identify more closely with the addressee(s), […]
  2017 February 13, Annette Becker, Markus Bieswanger, Introduction to English Linguistics, UTB, page 178