apartment

Pronunciation

• IPA: UK /əˈpɑːt.mənt/, US /əˈpɑːrt.mənt/^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French appartement,^[2][3] 16th century,^[2] from Italian appartamento (“a separated place”),^[2][3][4] from appartare (“to separate, put aside”),^[2][3] from a parte “aside, to the side”,^[5][6] from Latin ad “to” and partem, the accusative of pars “part, side”,^[2][4] with the suffix -mento (-ment).^[3][5] Merriam-Webster takes the Italian word as a translation of Spanish apartamiento “separation”.^[5] It is related to apart and part.^[3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

A suite of rooms in a building, private rooms for one person or family within a house: 1641, in John Evelyn's diary.^[3][7][2]

Semantic evolution

A single room is from 1715,^[7] originally expressed by the plural apartments.^[7] A separate place of abode, quarters, is from 1681.^[7] The sense “set of rooms rented as an independent dwelling in a building made up of these”, the American equivalent of the British flat, is by 1863, first of Paris,^[2] or 1874 in the OED,^[7] and apartment house is from 1870 in Etymonline,^[2] 1874 in the OED, chiefly American.^[7]

Timeline

• 1641 – a suite of rooms.^[3][7]
• 1681 – quarters.^[7]
• 1715 – a single room.^[7]
• 1863 – a dwelling in a block.^[2]
• 1870 – apartment house.^[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A room or set of rooms used as a home, usually in a building with other such homes; a flat.
2. An apartment house or apartment building.
3. A room; or a set of rooms in a larger building set aside for a purpose or a person: the royal apartments.

Word family

• apartmental
• apartment building
• apartment hotel
• efficiency apartment
• apartment house
• garden apartment
• studio apartment

Related words

• apart
• part
• flat

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
5. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press