apartment

The Italian verb appartare meant to set aside, to place separately. From a parte, to the side, it described the act of dividing a larger space into distinct sections. In 16th-century Florence and Venice, wealthy families began dividing their palazzo floors into appartamenti: suites of rooms that functioned as self-contained domestic units. The word carried a sense of distinction rather than density.

French borrowed it as appartement in the early 17th century. By 1660, the word appeared in descriptions of the Palace of Versailles, where Louis XIV assigned appartements to his courtiers, each a ranked set of rooms reflecting status in the solar hierarchy. In France, the word described grandeur, not economy.

English received apartment from French around 1641, and the meaning began its slow descent from palace wing to rented flat. As cities grew in the 19th century, the word shifted to describe purpose-built urban housing. The Parisian haussmannien buildings of the 1850s made apartment living a middle-class phenomenon rather than an aristocratic one. The word that began in a palace was learning to climb stairs.

By the early 20th century, American English had stripped the word entirely of its courtly origins. In New York, the apartment became synonymous with city life itself. What had once described a nobleman's private suite now named the 400-square-foot unit where millions first lived alone, fell in love, or stared at the wall at 3 a.m.