mamba
Legend
AP stands for adventure path, so you understood it correctly. Not sure what is misleading about something you understand.When I read AP, I see Adventure Path. That's a Paizo 'thing' and that pretty much stopped for D&D when Paizo moved to PF. Some Paizo AP have been released for 5e: Abomination Vaults and possibly the Kingmaker Bestiary...
Everything official D&D 5e is called an 'adventure', or "...an adventure in an anthology...".
An adventure is something shorter than an AP. The stuff in the anthologies are adventures, Rime of the Frostmaiden or Curse of Strahd are APs, to distinguish them from 16 page adventures.
What is the difference between the Abomination Vaults 5e AP and, say, Dungeon of the Mad Mage that makes the former an AP and the latter an adventure?

