Parkland

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A designated area of land set aside for recreational activities, often landscaped with trees and open spaces that promote public enjoyment and environmental awareness
2. An area of land allocated for public enjoyment and recreation, often featuring greenery and landscaped areas that allow for various outdoor activities and community gatherings
3. A stretch of land preserved for the public to enjoy nature, exercise, or leisure activities

Etymology: "Parkland" is a plain compound: "park" joined to "land," and the two parts have very different pedigrees. "Land" is an old Germanic word, descending through Old English "land" and Middle English "lond" from a Proto-Germanic root. "Park" has a longer, more travelled history, passing through Old French "parc" and Early Medieval Latin "parricus," and it is traced back to a Frankish word for an enclosure. So the compound brings together a native English word for ground and a term that once meant a walled hunting enclosure. That original sense of "park" explains much of its meaning. Medieval parks were fenced tracts of land kept for game and deer, not open public grounds, and the word only gradually came to mean a managed green space. "Parkland" therefore joins that enclosed, cultivated sense of the first element to the broad, open sense of the second, producing a term for landscape set aside as green space.

Synonyms: green space, recreation area, nature reserve, public park, woodland