Friday, June 28, 2019

nouns - Collective term for physical as opposed to virtual (digital) destinations



I am looking for a word or phrase that encapsulates the following collection of nouns in the sense that they are all physical, proper entities, and that you can go inside them:



Words that apply to the concept:





  • home

  • office

  • transport

  • shop



Words that do not apply to the concept:




  • street


  • field

  • digital (web sites)



Terms that I would prefer to exclude comprise the following:




  • location (too generic)

  • bricks-and-mortar

  • retail (doesn't comprise transportation)




What is a word or phrase that is a generic term for a physical location that a human can enter/occupy?


Answer



If it is the physicality of the entities that you wish to underline, rather than the type of location (i.e. a type of building or place) then you are looking for a word that is the opposite of 'virtual' and synonymous with 'physical'.



The only suitable word I can think of is 'Actual', as in "Actual Locations" which could work quite well as a list title if accompanied by another list headed "Virtual Locations", but might otherwise be a bit too broad for your context. The word 'Physical' does also work well in this context.



As is often the case, context is everything when trying to determine the most suitable word, so perhaps it might be worth expanding your question to include how you expect to use this word?




The main problem is that you are not just needing to differentiate between physical and virtual "destinations" but that the physical locations must also be meaningful to your usage (e.g. not a "field"). I am not certain that a suitable word exists for the subset of physical locations that are also meaningful (and can be both nouns (a building) and a collective noun/adjective such as 'transport'). 'Physical Destinations' is the only term I can come up with that satisfies all your criteria, except for the one about it being only one word!


No comments:

Post a Comment