while the ancient origin of the word is the german "zimmer", the immediate origin of the word is not from german, but from the yiddish "צימער" (as are many other words in israeli hebrew - boydem, shpitz, shiber, just to name a few).
Well, Rosenthal, Stahl, and Safa-Ivrit ( http://www.safa-ivrit.org/import...rted/
german.php ) all claim it comes from German directly, not Yiddish.
Whether it comes from Yiddish or German is an interesting question, and one which could be answerable with a little data. If the word gained currency in the 30s and 40s, it could very well be that it was brought over by German-speaking Jews. Even if this is the case, though, its spread was doubtless due to the fact that the word was already familiar to all Israelis (or soon-to-be-Israelis) who knew Yiddish, who at this time still constituted a majority of the Jews in the country.
I think the main issue isn't whether or not the word tzimmer appears in Yiddish, but whether it specifically refers to a guest-house, and not just a room.
Stahl says that the same word - zimmer - appears in German speaking countries on guest houses. I don't know German, but from the German wikipedia entry for "Bed-and-Breakfast", http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Bed...d_and_Breakfast it seems to say that the German term is either Zimmer or Privatzimmer.
As far as I can tell, it does not mean "guest house" in either German or Yiddish. I have checked 2 Yiddish dictionaries (Weinreich, Harkavy), both of which just give "room". Shutshkof's Yiddish thesaurus does not make the connection.
I also checked my large 2-volume German-English/E-G dictionary. It has over 60 entries for aspects of Zimmer, use in compounds, etc. Only one has any connection to "guest house".
The German Wikipedia article is neither here nor there. It is discussing the fact that a B&B gives you a room AND breakfast. In order to present this idea, it uses the term "room". Also, the safa-ivrit web page lists a number of words said to be borrowings from German which could just as well be from Yiddish or English, such as "auto", "bis", "tremp" "mishmash", "shmuts", "shmalts".
My guess is that the word was taken from Yiddish and a new meaning added in Modern Hebrew.
Unless, of course, you believe that the origin is from the woolen blankets that were given to people staying in the guest houses. :)
What about these two sites - do they give a feeling of the word?
http://www.zimmer-dortmund.de/
http://www.zimmer-im-revier.de/
They are both making rooms available to rent by the night, as in a B&B. One of them calls itself "the alternative to a hotel".
This is obviously a valid use of the word "room". It is not necessarily implied by any use. It is just as valid to say "we are setting up a room for the new baby".
Commenting by HaloScan
