- 1
A caravanserai was a kind of inn on old long-distance roads in the Middle East, Central Asia, and nearby lands. It had a big open courtyard in the middle. Travelling groups — merchants, animals, carts — came in, shut the gate, slept in rooms around the yard, and kept the camels or horses in the open space. It was a hotel, a stable, and a safe stop in one building. You meet the word in history, not in booking a room today, though some old ones still stand as museums or hotels with the old name. Spellings vary a little (caravansary too). Though actually, it belongs with the old sense of caravan — a travelling company — not with the British holiday trailer.
商隊客棧；隊商旅館（古時絲路一帶給商隊和牲口住的大院子旅店）
組成From Persian kârvânsarây: kârvân, “caravan, convoy”, plus sarây, “courtyard, hall, inn”. English also took it through Ottoman Turkish and French.
同家族的字
- caravanthe first half: a travelling group of people and animals
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
caravanserainoun/ˌkæɹəˈvænsəɹaɪ/
- 1
historicalA roadside inn, usually having a central courtyard where caravans (see sense 3) can rest, providing accommodation for travellers along trade routes in Asia and North Africa.
- A dervise travelling through Tartary, being arrived at the town of Balk, went into the king's palace by mistake, as thinking it to be a public inn, or caravansary. […] It happened that the king himself passed through the gallery during this debate, and, smiling at the mistake of the dervise, asked him how he could possibly be so dull as not to distinguish a palace from a caravansary? […] 'Ah, Sir,' said the dervise, a house that changes its inhabitants so often, and receives such a perpetual succession of guests, is not a palace, but a caravansary.'
- But not in sumptuous Caravansary / The adventurer idles there, / Nor satiates wonder with her pomp and wealth; […]
- 2
A place resembling a caravanserai (sense 1) as being a place for resting temporarily, or a meeting place (especially one that is busy, or where people of different cultures encounter each other).
- Conſider, I beſeech you, vvhat proviſion and accommodation, the Author of our being has prepared for us, that vve might not go on our vvay ſorrovving—hovv many caravanſera's of reſt—vvhat povvers and faculties he has given us for taking it—vvhat apt objects he has placed in our vvay to entertain us; […]
- They stopped at the most memorable places, and at last arrived at Rome, where a princess vacated her palace for their accommodation and so many louis-d'or a-month. Rome, once the mistress, is now the caravanseray of the world.
- 3
Synonym of caravan (“a convoy of travellers, their cargo and vehicles, and pack animals”).
- There they go, our brothers who have been educated at public schools and universities, mounting those steps, passing in and out of those doors,[…]. It is a solemn sight always—a procession, like a caravanserai crossing a desert.
- 4
archaicA hostelry, an inn; also (humorous), an (upscale) hotel.
- By the bye it is as well to mention, for the benefit of the inexperienced, that there are no Inns in Ireland; all are hotels, from the lowest road cabin to the splendid caravanserai, with all its appurtenances of luxury and ease.
- Six anxious inquiries of marble-fronted-hotel clerks about rates; and twice when she angrily made it plain she couldn't afford it, and quit the caravanserai where Andy and Mahala and Mrs Boyle were to loll in kitchenette-bedizened splendor and hunted up a smaller hotel that looked like a private house with obesity.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。