apartment

• APT (The US Postal Service prefers this variant)
• apt.

French appartement; compare with Italian appartamento, from appartare (“to separate, set apart”); all from Latin ad + pars 'part'. See apart.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /əˈpɑːt.mənt/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /əˈpɑɹt.mənt/

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apartment (plural apartments)

1. A complete domicile occupying only part of a building.

   apartment dwellers

   • 2016, VOA Learning English (public domain)

     I am Jonathan. I am in apartment B4. — I am in apartment C2.

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2. (archaic) A suite of rooms within a domicile, designated for a specific person or persons and including a bedroom.
   • 1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], chapter IV, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume I, London: Printed for Benj[amin] Motte, […], OCLC 995220039, part I (A Voyage to Lilliput):

     By this contrivance I got into the inmost court; and, lying down upon my side, I applied my face to the windows of the middle stories, which were left open on purpose, and discovered the most splendid apartments that can be imagined. There I saw the empress and the young princes in their several lodgings, with their chief attendants about them.

3. (obsolete) A division of an enclosure that is separate from others; a compartment
   • 1883 April 23, Slawson v. Grand Street R. Co., 107 U.S. 649, 2 S.Ct. 663, 664,

     The specification described the ordinary fare-box used in street cars and omnibuses, consisting of two apartments, the one directly above the other.... [T]he passenger deposited his fare in an aperture in the top of the upper apartment. It fell upon and was arrested by a movable platform.... This platform turned on an axis acted on by a lever. When turned, the fare fell into the lower apartment, which was a receptacle for holding the fares accumulated....

4. (computing, COM) A conceptual space used for separation in the threading architecture. Objects in one apartment cannot directly access those in another, but must use a proxy.

• (domicile occupying part of a building): flat (UK); unit; (compare with) condominium

• apartment building

• tenement