apartment

noun

Etymology: From French appartement, from Italian appartamento, from Spanish apartamiento (“separation, seclusion”). See apart and -ment.

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

   “apartment dwellers”

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

2. 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. 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. 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. 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.