apartment

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A complete domicile occupying only part of a building, especially one for rent; a flat.

   apartment dwellers

2. 2
   noun

   A suite of rooms within a domicile, designated for a specific person or persons and including a bedroom.

   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. 3
   noun

   A room within a house.

   For the matter of that, it is difficult to make a nice, genteel sitting-room out of an apartment of which the principal features are a sink and a big gas stove.

4. 4
   noun

   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....

5. 5
   noun

   a suite of rooms usually on one floor of an apartment house

6. 6
   noun

   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.

Etymology

From French appartement, from Italian appartamento, from Spanish apartamiento (“separation, seclusion”). See apart.