Park

How to spell park

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce park

What does park mean?

1. nounA public area of open land, usually with grass and trees, kept for recreation.
2. verbTo bring a vehicle to a stop and leave it in a particular place.

Park in a sentence

• noun

  The children fed the ducks at the park on Sunday morning.

• verb

  Please park the van behind the loading bay before the shop opens.

• noun

  A new running track was added to the park near the river.

• verb

  You can park the car in the visitor bay next to reception.

Where does park come from?

Language of origin: French

The word arrived in English in the 1200s from Old French parc, which meant an enclosed tract of land, and that French word in turn came from Medieval Latin parricus, meaning an enclosure or pen. The deeper root is Germanic, related to the same source that gives modern German Pferch, a fold for animals, so the original idea was simply a fenced piece of ground used to keep beasts in. In medieval England a park was specifically a stretch of land enclosed by royal grant for keeping deer and game, and only later did it soften into the public green space and ornamental grounds we picture today. The verb sense, meaning to position something in a set place, grew out of the noun and was first used of military equipment being gathered in an enclosure before it ever applied to motor cars. The spelling has stayed mercifully simple and phonetic, which is why park trips up almost nobody.

How the word is built

• park (enclosed land, ground); a single unanalysable root with no prefix or suffix