Word.ws English Dictionary

nonplace

nonplace noun: an anthropological space of transience where human beings remain anonymous, such as an airport or shopping mall.

Noun

nonplace (plural nonplaces)

  1. An anthropological space of transience where human beings remain anonymous, such as an airport or shopping mall.
    • Marc Auge identifies the nonplace as both a symptom and product of supermodernity. Auge's designation of the nonplace is neither prescriptive nor apocalyptic, realizing that the differential relation between place and nonplace is never absolute. The proliferation of nonplaces, however, is directly...2000, Erika Suderburg, Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art, U of Minnesota Press, →ISBN, page 205
    • Nonplace does not mean no place, nor does it mean a nonexistent place. It just lacks certain conditions that a place should have, such as a name and a referential reality. Commonsense tells us that to have a name but no referential reality, or to have referential reality but no name, does not count...2012, Kai-cheung Dung, Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City, Columbia University Press, →ISBN
  2. That which is not a place but has some aspects of one, such as cyberspace.

Examples of nonplace in a sentence

  • Marc Auge identifies the nonplace as both a symptom and product of supermodernity.2000, Erika Suderburg, Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art, U of Minnesota Press, →ISBN, page 205:
  • Nonplace does not mean no place, nor does it mean a nonexistent place.2012, Kai-cheung Dung, Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City, Columbia University Press, →ISBN:
  • Or, to put it more precisely: although not forced to travel fleetingly from place to place, they travel anyway—to nonplaces, […]2021, Stathis Gourgouris, Dream Nation:

Forms of nonplace

pluralnonplaces
alternative formnon-place

Origin of nonplace

Calque of French non-lieu, non- + place.

Questions about nonplace

What does nonplace mean?
Nonplace means an anthropological space of transience where human beings remain anonymous, such as an airport or shopping mall.
How do you use nonplace in a sentence?
Marc Auge identifies the nonplace as both a symptom and product of supermodernity.
What part of speech is nonplace?
Nonplace is a noun.
What is the plural of nonplace?
The plural of nonplace is nonplaces.

Words near nonplace in the dictionary

  1. nonpivotal
  2. nonpivoted
  3. nonpivoting
  4. nonpixel
  5. nonpizza
  6. nonplace
  7. nonplacebo
  8. nonplacebos
  9. nonplaced
  10. nonplacement
  11. nonplacental

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nonplace (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “nonplace.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nonplace. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.