apartment
Americannoun
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apartments
plural
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a room or a group of related rooms, among similar sets in one building, designed for use as a dwelling.
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a building containing or made up of such rooms.
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any separated room or group of rooms in a house or other dwelling.
We heard cries from an apartment at the back of the house.
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British. apartments, a set of rooms used as a dwelling by one person or one family.
noun
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(often plural) any room in a building, usually one of several forming a suite, esp one that is spacious and well furnished and used as living accommodation, offices, etc
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another name (esp US and Canadian) for flat 2
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( as modifier )
apartment building
apartment house
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Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of apartment
1635–45; < French appartement < Italian appartamento, equivalent to apparta ( re ) to separate, divide (verbal derivative of a parte apart, to one side) + -mento -ment
Explanation
An apartment is a private residence in a building or house that's divided into several separate dwellings. An apartment can be one small room or several. An apartment is a flat — it's usually a few rooms that you rent in a building. Your apartment might be in a fancy high rise with a doorman and an elevator, or over your parents' garage. Since the 1640s, an apartment has meant "separate rooms within a house," from the Italian word appartimento, which literally means "a separated place."
Vocabulary lists containing apartment
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Activist Manuel Cuesta Morúa, 63, woke before dawn in his apartment in a Soviet-style block built in the 1970s in east Havana.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026
My brother was filming, and he does a good job, but his apartment in New York was really slanted and there’s lots of dogs running around.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 12, 2026
From the air, neighborhoods in Cali appeared flattened, with piles of grey rubble replacing entire blocks of homes and apartment buildings.
From Barron's ● Aug. 12, 2026
Stacked balconies on surrounding apartment buildings are packed with celebrants, drinks, fireworks scorecards.
From Salon ● Aug. 11, 2026
The next apartment belonged to a young family with a baby, and peeking inside, Natalie could see they didn’t have much.
From "Two Degrees" by Alan Gratz
Featuring a high-end hotel, golf course and water park, the resort-style city's seafront offices and apartments were expected to be in high demand.
From BBC ● Aug. 11, 2026
My fiancé and I spent a sweltering summer in New York City touring fifth-floor walkup apartments, and then packing up our belongings and moving them to a new place a few blocks away.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 11, 2026
In Paris in particular this summer, the steep temperatures turned apartments directly under iconic Haussmann-era buildings with zinc-covered roofs into virtual ovens.
From Barron's ● Aug. 11, 2026
Noticing a need for affordable meals, Palacios and fellow USC student Josiah Herfurth spent this past semester hosting $10-per-person lunches at their college apartments, dubbing the offering Cafe 10:31.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 9, 2026
Whether there were rules about first-year students living in apartments.
From "We'll Fly Away" by Bryan Bliss
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
