noun of place

Calque of Arabic اِسْم مَكَان (ism makān)

noun of place (plural nouns of place)

1. In Arabic and other Semitic languages, a noun formed from a root and expressing the sense of "place of X".

The Arabic noun of place is most often formed from the root of a verb and means “the place for doing x”, where x is the meaning of the verb. It is typically formed by placing the three consonants of a root in the pattern مَفْعَل (mafʕal), with the prefix م: for instance, the tool noun from the root ك ت ب (k-t-b) is مَكْتَب (maktab, “desk”). In the case of مَكْتَب (maktab), the basic (Form I) verb from the root is كَتَبَ (kataba, “to write”), so مَكْتَب (maktab) literally means “place for writing”.

Other languages have similar formations, but without the same name, e.g. the -ārium ending in Latin or the -ιον (-ion) and -εῖον (-eîon) in Ancient Greek.