apartment
- 01 A1 Beginner
a set of rooms where you live that is part of a larger building.
a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building. Standard in American English; 'flat' is the preferred term in British English.
Simple“They moved into a modern apartment on the fourth floor of the building.”
In context“The developer converted the historic warehouse into luxury apartments, retaining the original brickwork and high ceilings to attract young professionals.”
UsageUsually countable; often used with 'in' or 'at'.
PitfallI live in a small apartment of three rooms. I live in a small three-room apartment.In English, we usually put the number of rooms before the word 'apartment' as an adjective, rather than using 'of'.
- 02 C1 Advanced
a private space in a computer program that keeps different tasks separate so they do not crash.
a logical container within a process for objects sharing the same thread access requirements. Used to manage concurrency and prevent data corruption.
Simple“The program uses a single-threaded apartment to handle the user interface.”
In context“When developing COM components, the programmer must decide whether the object will reside in a single-threaded or multi-threaded apartment to ensure thread safety.”
UsageCommonly used in the context of Component Object Model (COM) programming.
apartment vs flat — Flat is the standard British term for a self-contained home on one floor, while apartment is the preferred American term.
Usage apartment building · apartment buildings
From French appartement, from Italian appartamento, from Spanish apartamiento (“separation, seclusion”). See apart.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.