As in theme park and water park, opposed to national park and public park.

It seems like a bottleneck in language that I am struggling to find a way around. I believe the word park is poisoned in embedding models and would like to test that theory but I’m at a loss. I tried my usual thesaurus, looking at translations, and at etymologies but it seems like the word has no effective alternate so far. It is a rather interesting conundrum beyond the scope of my application – how would you differentiate and specify what a place like Disneyland is, without ambiguity, when “park” is not a useful word? And no land is not specific enough to describe the place.

I have a few ideas and stuff I have tried but I really want to know your ideas.

Etymology according to Wiktionary:

From Middle English park, from Old French parc (“livestock pen”), from Medieval Latin parcus, parricus, from Frankish *parrik (“enclosure, pen, fence”). Cognate with Dutch perk (“enclosure; flowerbed”), Old High German pfarrih, pferrih (“enclosure, pen”), Old English pearroc (“enclosure”) (whence modern English paddock), Old Norse parrak, parak (“enclosure, pen; distress, anxiety”), Icelandic parraka (“to keep pent in under restraint and coercion”). More at parrock, paddock. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/park

  • snooggums@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    That is why the examples you gave have additional words to clarify which type of park they are.

    A public park is generally a neighborhood part with open areas to do things in.

    A national park is generally much larger, has wild animals and nature things to check out.

    A water park is based on water activities.

    Park is just a descriptor for the fact that the thing is a large area of land for a specific purpose. It doesn’t really have meaning without the additional words, even if it is often used by itself as shorthand for public and national parks.