Hanoi Hilton
Hanoi Hilton proper noun: hỏa Lò Prison in Vietnam, where prisoners of war were held and tortured.
Proper noun
the Hanoi Hilton
- Hỏa Lò Prison in Vietnam, where prisoners of war were held and tortured.
- The Hilton Hanoi Opera hotel has opened, a few blocks from Hoa Lo, the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” where American prisoners were held during the Vietnam War. (The few remaining cells of that prison have been preserved as a museum.)1999 May 30, Luba Vangelova, “From the Hanoi Hilton To the Hilton Hanoi”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
- Those thoughts sustained him after he was shot down and forced to eject from his F-105 Thunderchief during a bombing mission over North Vietnam on Oct. 27, 1967, and they continued to sustain him in prison camps, including the notorious “Hanoi Hilton,” where he was starved, tortured and subjected...2025 November 19, Jeré Longman, “Robert L. Stirm, Returning P.O.W. in Pulitzer-Winning Photo, Dies at 92”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC
Origin of Hanoi Hilton
From Hanoi + Hilton. An alliterative construction, pairing the location Hanoi (metonymically referring to North Vietnam) with a word referring to lodgings. An ironic reference to the Hilton chain of luxury hotels.
Questions about Hanoi Hilton
- What does Hanoi Hilton mean?
- Hanoi Hilton means hỏa Lò Prison in Vietnam, where prisoners of war were held and tortured.
- What part of speech is Hanoi Hilton?
- Hanoi Hilton is a proper noun.
Words near Hanoi Hilton in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Hanoi Hilton (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “Hanoi Hilton.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hanoi_hilton. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.