7 Nov /16

Apartment

Apartment - Word of the day - EVS Translations
Apartment – Word of the day – EVS Translations

While the American dream may involve owning your own home, many find it more sensible, practical, or economical to either rent or own an apartment or, if you use British English, a flat. According to 2014 data, 52% of American renters (comprising 26.5 million households and almost 58 million people) live in a structure of 2 or more apartments, and in larger cities, such as New York, Dallas, and Seattle, where real estate costs can be extraordinarily high, a substantial percentage of the overall population chooses apartment living (50%, 41%, and 38%, respectively). Though many of us live in them, we often do not think of them past being our own residences, so what is the deal with apartments?

Coming to English from the Italian appartimento, meaning ‘a separated place,’ via the French appartement, our word actually has its roots in the Latin ad + parte, meaning ‘to the side or place.’

It is rather fitting that the word should originate in Latin, as it was the ancient Romans who were among the first to actually advance the concept. Being the first to pioneer the idea, however, does not mean that Rome is the founder of all apartments. It seems to be an independent shared human value, as evidence of multiple-unit dwellings can also be found in Classical Period of the Mesoamerican Teotihuacan, the Hakka people in Southern China, and the Chacoan people in Northwest New Mexico.

The first known use of the word in English comes from William Browne’s 1647 translation of Marin Le Roy’s The History of Polexander, where it is written that: “He received her..in the most stately apartment of the great Palace of Morocco.” In this application, an apartment can be seen as just a room and through the majority of the 1800’s the meaning was still more like a one-room lodging (like a modest hotel room) as can be seen by Sir Walter Scott’s 1815 work, Guy Mannering, where he writes that: “I stole softly to the window of my apartment.”

The first actual mention of an apartment as being more like a full dwelling instead of just basic lodging comes in 1874 in the American magazine Scribner’s Monthly (8 63/2), where it is mentioned that: “The apartments, some of six, others of ten rooms, including kitchen and servants’ rooms, are designed for strictly independent house-keeping.”