apartment

[uh-pahrt-muh nt] /əˈpɑrt mənt/
noun
1.
a room or a group of related rooms, among similar sets in one building, designed for use as a dwelling.
2.
a building containing or made up of such rooms.
3.
any separated room or group of rooms in a house or other dwelling:
We heard cries from an apartment at the back of the house.
4.
apartments, British. a set of rooms used as a dwelling by one person or one family.
Origin
1635-45; < French appartement < Italian appartamento, equivalent to apparta(re) to separate, divide (verbal derivative of a parte apart, to one side) + -mento -ment
Related forms
apartmental
[uh-pahrt-men-tl] /ə pɑrtˈmɛn tl/ (Show IPA), adjective
Synonyms
1. Apartment, compartment agree in denoting a space enclosed by partitions or walls. Apartment, however, emphasizes the idea of separateness or privacy: one's own apartment. Compartment suggests a section of a larger space: compartments in a ship's hold, in an orange crate.
Examples from the web for apartment
  • Or the cake could be an apartment that has small rooms with views and large windowless rooms.
  • As more would-be homeowners look to rent, apartment prices are feeding inflation while home prices continue to fall.
  • Our old apartment is sitting empty, and not selling.
  • Somewhere in an outlying district of this post-Soviet capital, four graduate students gather in a two-room apartment.
  • Armed police in flak vests surged into her apartment.
  • Improving energy efficiency in a rental apartment requires attention to the same details as in a house or condominium.
  • In a large apartment building, it's impossible to avoid the neighbors.
  • Still, many brokers and developers take heart from the fact that apartment buyers are back in the market.
  • They are back at school with their friends and living with me in an apartment complex with a swimming pool and a movie theater.
  • Explore the roof, with its whimsical chimney towers, and the apartment restored in the style of the period.
British Dictionary definitions for apartment

apartment

/əˈpɑːtmənt/
noun
1.
(often pl) any room in a building, usually one of several forming a suite, esp one that is spacious and well furnished and used as living accommodation, offices, etc
2.
  1. another name (esp US and Canadian) for flat2 (sense 1)
  2. (as modifier): apartment building, apartment house
Word Origin
C17: from French appartement, from Italian appartamento, from appartare to set on one side, separate
Word Origin and History for apartment
n.

1640s, "private rooms for the use of one person within a house," from French appartement (16c.), from Italian appartimento, literally "a separated place," from appartere "to separate," from a "to" (see ad-) + parte "side, place," from Latin partem (see part (n.)). Sense of "set of private rooms in a building entirely of these" (the U.S. equivalent of British flat) is first attested 1874.