park
Definitions
General English
- noun an open space with grass and trees
- verb to leave your car somewhere while you are not using it
- noun the sixteenth letter of the alphabet, between O and Q
General Science
- noun an area of open land used as a place of recreation
Aviation
- verb to leave a vehicle such as a car or an aircraft in a particular place when no one is using it
Cars & Driving
- noun one of the positions of the gear selector for an automatic gearbox; when engaged (after the vehicle has come to a complete standstill) the driving wheels are locked.
- symbolP
- abbreviation a letter on the sidewall of a tyre denoting the maximum speed for which it is designed (150 km/h or 95 mph).
Computing
- verb to move the read/write head of a hard disk drive over a point on the disk where no data is stored
Electronics
- In a disk drive, to safely position the read/write heads, so as to protect them and the data stored on the disks. Most drives do this automatically upon disconnection of power.
- symbol for electric power, or power (1).
- symbol for permeance, or magnetic permeance.
Military
- noun an area on a military base where military vehicles are kept
- verb to stop a vehicle beside a road or in a special area and leave it there
Astronomy
- P Signifies a periodic comet, like comet P/Encke (Encke’s Comet) or P/Halley (Halley’s Comet)
Banking
- symbol a measure of M2 shown as a ratio of the velocity of money, used as an indication of inflation
Origin & History of “park”
The origins of park are Germanic. It goes back to a prehistoric Germanic base, meaning ‘enclosed place’, which has also given English paddock. this reached English by direct descent, but park took a route via medieval Latin. here it was parricus, which passed into English via Old French parc. The verbal use of park, for ‘place a vehicle’, began to emerge in the early 19th century, and was based on the notion of putting military vehicles, artillery, etc in an ‘enclosure’. Parquet (19th c.) comes from a diminutive of French parc, in the sense ‘small enclosed place’.
