A tavern is a place of business where people gather to drink alcoholic beverages and be served food, and in some cases, where travelers receive lodging. An inn is a tavern which has a license to put up guests as lodgers. The word derives from the Latin taberna and the Greek ταβέρνα/taverna, whose original meaning was a shed or workshop. In the English language the tavern was an establishment which served wine whilst the inn served beer/ale. Over time, the words tavern and inn became interchangeable and synonymous with one another.
Read more about Tavern: North America, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Scandinavia, Mexico, Australia, Notable Taverns/inns
Famous quotes containing the word tavern:
“Arrive at New Orleans, a city of ships, steamers, flatboats, rafts, mud, fog, filth, stench, and a mixture of races and tongues. Cholera, “some.” [At] Planters’ Hotel. Mem:—Never get caught in a cheap tavern in a strange city.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Rude poets of the tavern hearth,
squandering your unquoted mirth,
which keeps the ground, and never soars,
while jake retorts, and reuben roars;
tough and screaming, as birch-bark,
goes like bullet to its mark;
while the solid curse and jeer
never balk the waiting ear.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The tavern will compare favorably with the church. The church is the place where prayers and sermons are delivered, but the tavern is where they are to take effect, and if the former are good, the latter cannot be bad.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)