When did flats become apartments?

neverdespairgirl

Incisor wrote: »

But was it stunning? It has to be stunning

And it has to be a "much sought-after road / development / sh!thole"

dopester

"Apartment" - I thought it sounded a bit French.

Mid-17th century. < French appartement< Italian a parte "apart," literally "to the side"]

apartment
1641, "private rooms for the use of one person within a house," from Fr. appartement, from It. appartimento, lit. "a separated place," from appartere "to separate," from a "to" + parte "side, place" (see apart). Sense of "set of private rooms in a building entirely of these" (the U.S. equivalent of British flat) is first attested 1874.

kunekune

In scottish real estate adverts, "apartment" means room, so you go to see a six apartment tenement (ie, a flat with six rooms).

ZootHornRollo

there are a lot of 'villas' around these parts and not a palm tree to be seen.

most of which seem to be situated on ex council 'developments'

Riq

Well I call flats in central manchester apartments, just because that is what they are generally called and it's easier to follow the general consensus than get all technical and a bit dickish

I have no illusions and I know that they are just flats.

Ian_Griffiths_Halifax

kunekune wrote: »

In scottish real estate adverts, "apartment" means room, so you go to see a six apartment tenement (ie, a flat with six rooms).

Are they the same as Estate Agent adverts?

Ian_Griffiths_Halifax

I don't think it will be long before we see apartments the size of these hotel rooms in Tokyo

http://www.capsuleinn.com/

http://www.capsuleinn.com/rooms_facilities.html

ginvzt

Sorry, the terraced houses are now called 'mews', and if it is 3 storey, then it is a town house...

And the gates in those "luxury gated executive canal-side developments" are needed not to keep undesirables out of the development, but to keep them away from public!

"Pods" - we have a few around there we live, and it seems to be a 1-bed flats with little oddly shaped windows (round, for example - how do you get curtains for those??)

Richard_Webster

...and the sad thing is that there are so many people out there that are fooled by this developer speak and actually think their "apartment" is worth more because it has that designation...

You also get the names of areas being subtly changed. So in Southampton we have an area of good quality private houses called Bassett. Next to it is the Flower Estate, a Council estate built late 20s/30s. At one point this was all in the local government ward ( where the boundaries are inevitably arbitrary because of the need to have equal numbers of electors in each ward) called Bassett although the locals would call it Swaythling - but estate agents call it Bassett if they are selling a property on the estate - so now we have seen "Upper Bassett" to distinguish the private area!

It is also in the new parliamentary constituency of Romsey and Southampton North - so we may get it called "near Romsey"!

Captain_Mainwaring_2

lonestar1 wrote: »

arent apartments meant to have their own door to the street rather than flats which have a communal entrance/hall way ?

I believe that's called a "prefab"