What is the Difference?
Park and Park are homographs, which means they are spelled and pronounced the same, but have different meanings.
Park can refer to an action in which one moves a vehicle into a space made to hold it. This does not always refer to vehicles, but it does most of the time.
A park, on the other hand, is a place that one goes. Parks are usually in nature and often have play areas or activity areas available. Most often it is a place to go for relaxation or fun.
Examples
Park (the action)
“Park your car in the lot. On the way out, don’t forget to take your parking lot ticket to the front desk to have it validated.” Here you can see the action is “to park” and the “parking lot” is referring to the place in which one parks. A small side note: having a parking lot ticket validated means to have it given a stamp that provides free or discounted parking for your visit.
“I am having trouble learning how to parallel park. If I can’t figure it out soon, I will fail my driving test.” Again, this sentence is talking about the action of “park.”
“This parking lot is so huge, that I’ve forgotten where I parked the car.” Here we’re talking about the parking lot again, but now we’re adding in a past tense use of the word “park” to talk about where they “parked” in the past.
“Park yourself in that chair and don’t move until you’ve finished your homework.” As mentioned earlier, sometimes “park” can refer to something other than vehicles. In this common form of the word, park still has the same meaning of putting something in a spot where it belongs, however in this case we are talking about a person and the place they belong is a chair.
Park (the place)
“We haven’t gone to the park in ages, I want to go feed the ducks in the pond.” Here we are talking about going to a place called a “park” where we would do something in nature to relax.
“The amusement park is set up downtown for the celebration, and I noticed that they had a roller coaster.” In this case a “park” is still a place where you go to do something, but in this case it is set up entertainment rides.
