the.com/apartment
A box you rent from someone who owns more boxes than you.
means A self-contained set of rooms you live in within a larger building, rented or owned, separate from your neighbors' sets.
from From French 'appartement,' itself from Italian 'appartamento' — rooms 'separated off' or 'apart' from the rest of a larger house. It traces back to Latin 'separare,' to divide. The irony is baked in: a word meaning 'set apart' now describes living stacked a wall away from dozens of strangers.
- name irony
- named for separation, now famous for thin shared walls
- british vs us
- brits say flat, same box, fancier accent
- ancient rome
- romans lived in insulae, apartment blocks up six stories
- square footage
- average us apartment shrank even as rents grew