Pondscape

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A landscape or garden scene in which ponds form a central feature of the design
2. The overall view of a area shaped by ponds, including their banks, plants and surrounding ground
3. Scenery built around one or more ornamental or natural ponds as its main visual element

Etymology: "Pondscape" is a plain compound: "pond" joined to the suffix "-scape," which English borrowed from Dutch "landschap" and which came to mean a view or a scene. Because "-scape" was itself popularised in English as a productive suffix, writers could attach it to almost any noun, creating words like "cityscape" and "seascape" on the same pattern. Applied to "pond," the result names a view or picture in which a pond is the central feature: a landscape arranged around still water, often in gardens, paintings or photographs. The word carries the original sense of "scape" as a scene rather than a region of land, so it describes what the eye takes in rather than the ground itself.