penthouse [ME] A penthouse now suggests a luxurious apartment with extensive views, but originally was much more humble—a shed, outhouse, or lean-to attached to the outside of a building, and called a pentis. The word came from a shortening of French apentis, which is from Latin pendere ‘to hang’, the source of appendage [M17th], *appendix, and *pendant. In the 16th century people began to forget its origins and to associate it with French pente ‘slope’ and *house. The modern use for a flat or apartment on the top floor of a tall building began during the 1890s in the USA. At first these penthouses were not necessarily exclusive—the first reference to one talks of it as accommodation for a janitor and his family.