Room and board

This article is about the general concept. For other uses, see Room and board (disambiguation).

Room and board describes an accommodation which, in exchange for money, labour or other recompense, a person is provided with a place to live in addition to meals. It commonly occurs as a fee at higher educational institutions, such as colleges and universities; it also occurs in hotel-style accommodation for short stays.

A dorm room at Endicott College, Massachusetts, USA

Definition

• Room refers to a bedroom provided, sometimes private and occasionally with an en suite bathroom.
• Board refers to food being provided; the use of this term may derive from the Old English bord, meaning table.^[1]

Two commonly encountered boards are:

• Half board, where the host provides only breakfast and dinner meals.
• Full board, where the host provides three daily meals.

Another option is:

• Bed and breakfast, literally, a place to sleep and where breakfast is provided.

See also

• Bistro, a type of informal French restaurant
• Boarding house, a lodging establishment
• Boarding school
• Parlour boarder, an archaic term for a category of pupil at boarding school
• Sideboard, an article of furniture from which food is served in a dining room