dormitory

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A room providing sleeping quarters for a number of persons.
2. n. A building for housing a number of persons, as at a school or resort.
3. n. A community whose inhabitants commute to a nearby city for employment and recreation.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A place, building, or room to sleep in. Specifically — A place in convents where the monks or nuns sleep, either divided into a succession of small chambers or cells, or left undivided, in the form commonly of a long room. The dormitory has usually immediate access to the church or chapel, for the convenience of its occupants in attending nocturnal services.
2. n. That part of a boarding-school or other institution where the inmates sleep, usually a large room, either open or divided by low partitions, or a series of rooms opening upon a common hall or corridor: in American colleges, sometimes an entire building divided into sleeping-rooms.
3. n. A burial-place; a cemetery. See cemetery, which has the same etymological meaning.

Wiktionary

1. n. A room containing a number of beds (and often some other furniture and/or utilities) for sleeping, often applied to student and backpacker accommodation of this kind. Common abbreviation: dorm
2. n. A building or part of a building which houses students, soldiers, monks etc. who sleep there and use communal further facilities.
3. n. Short for dormitory town, a suburban or rural settlement housing city workers

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A sleeping room, or a building containing a series of sleeping rooms; a sleeping apartment capable of containing many beds; esp., one connected with a college or boarding school.
2. n. obsolete A burial place.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a large sleeping room containing several beds
2. n. a college or university building containing living quarters for students