apartment

plural apartments · alternative APT · alternative apt.

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

   apartment dwellers

   3 more examples

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

   2016, VOA Learning English (public domain)

   Sitting alongside rare wine, coloured diamonds and old masters, a full-floor apartment in a pencil tower with a view of Central Park makes a fine addition to the investor's trophy cabinet. Except it is not just a trinket in a safe. It is a very large presence on the skyline for all to endure.

   2019 February 5, Oliver Wainwright, “Super-tall, super-skinny, super-expensive: the 'pencil towers' of New York's super-rich”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 11 Nov 2023

   Calhoun, an endlessly inventive designer of experiments, built an enclosure outfitted with rat apartments and partitioned the pen into connected “neighborhoods,” creating a murid arcadia that he could observe at his leisure.

   2024 September 17, Ben Goldfarb, “Book Review: How One Weird Rodent Ecologist Tried to Change the Fate of Humanity”, in Scientific American, New York, N.Y.: Springer Nature America, Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 17 Sep 2024

   Synonyms: flat, unit, condominium

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

   1 more example

   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.

   1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], “Mildendo, the Metropolis of Lilliput, Described, together with the Emperor’s Palace. […]”, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume I, London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], →OCLC, part I (A Voyage to Lilliput), page 69

3. 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.

   1913, Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes, The Lodger

4. obsoleteA division of an enclosure that is separate from others; a compartment.

   1 more example

   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. COMcomputingA conceptual space used for separation in the threading architecture. Objects in one apartment cannot directly access those in another, but must use a proxy.