These words refer to living space consisting of a room or set of rooms forming part of a building or existing as a unit within some larger unit. Lodgings and accommodation are equally vague in referring to any sort of living arrangements, usually temporary. Lodgings can sound old-fashioned; accommodation while less informal in tone, is more current: troubadours who wandered through medieval France seeking lodgings for the night; asking him how he liked his accommodation at the hotel. The latter can also refer to a temporary, improvised arrangement, including the paraphernalia required to house a guest: setting up overnight accommodation for two more visitors by raiding the linen cupboard and calling into service the living-room lounge and camp stretcher.

Flat and apartment are much more specific than the preceding, referring to sets of rooms usually rented and occupied for a longer term. As neutral description, flat is the preferred term in Australian and New Zealand speech, apartment in American speech. In U.S. usage, however, flat often refers to a cramped, inhospitable apartment without conveniences: a cold-water flat . A bedsitter is a one-roomed flat which may include limited cooking facilities and bathroom or may have them adjacent. These could be shared with other bedsitter occupants.

• To save money in London, they shared a bedsitter in Kensington.

Suite is a widely applied term for any well-appointed set of rooms. It can refer to luxury accommodation in a hotel: the bridal suite . It can refer to a large or lavish flat : the penthouse suite . It can also refer to a set of office rooms intended not as living space but for conducting business: an executive suite . Quarters has almost as wide a range of usage; it can refer to specified buildings within a complex of other buildings or to a part of a building or residence where certain kinds of people live; the doctors’ quarters ; servants quarters . It has a particular relevance in military parlance, referring to the place where a specified group lives: officers’ quarters ; confined to quarters .