apartment

noun

apart·​ment ə-ˈpärt-mənt How to pronounce apartment (audio)
plural apartments
1
: a room or set of rooms fitted especially with housekeeping facilities and usually leased as a dwelling
2
: a building containing several individual apartments
3
British : a large and impressive room or set of rooms
usually plural
Assured that the Queen and Prince Philip had retired to bed, Mr Hillyard tried to pass through the Royal apartments as the train left Aberdeen on its journey to London.Jonathan Petre
apartmental adjective

Examples of apartment in a Sentence

We lived in an apartment for several years before buying a house. a spacious six-room apartment that occupies the entire upper floor of a two-family house
Recent Examples on the Web The third-floor unit has two bedrooms and a deck, while the fourth-floor apartment just has one bedroom. Emma Reynolds, Robb Report, 16 Nov. 2023 Taylor, an emergency medical technician, was sleeping at home with her boyfriend Kenneth Walker when officers charged into the apartment, using a battering ram to break down the door. Cara Tabachnick, CBS News, 16 Nov. 2023 The suspect then tracked Wilson’s movements on the exercise app Strava and stopped her car near the Austin apartment where the victim had been staying, prosecutors said. Rebeccah Glaser, NBC News, 16 Nov. 2023 Police arrested several people at an apartment where the dog was found. Peter Hermann, Washington Post, 15 Nov. 2023 The 400 apartments would share 240 parking spaces, which exceeds the average of half a space per unit provided in the applicant’s other senior affordable housing projects, the report states. Phil Diehl, San Diego Union-Tribune, 14 Nov. 2023 Her father, the real estate mogul and the wellspring of the family’s wealth, developed thousands of apartments in Brooklyn and Queens. Maggie Haberman, New York Times, 13 Nov. 2023 And then our mother got pregnant with Nina, in ’61, and suddenly the apartment was too small. Michael Schulman, The New Yorker, 13 Nov. 2023 This apartment just went on the market, but the building has been selling slowly. Curbed, 13 Nov. 2023 See More

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'apartment.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Etymology

French appartement, from Italian appartamento

First Known Use

circa 1645, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler
The first known use of apartment was circa 1645

Dictionary Entries Near apartment

Cite this Entry

“Apartment.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apartment. Accessed 28 Nov. 2023.

Kids Definition

apartment

noun
apart·​ment ə-ˈpärt-mənt How to pronounce apartment (audio)
1
: a room or set of rooms used as a dwelling
2

More from Merriam-Webster on apartment

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
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