[jjtheblunt]

to your point, when my Aussie friends first mentioned a "car park" to my north american born self, i wondered _momentarily_ what that was, then realized it's sort of a fun name for what i would call a parking lot.

[nl]

I've never thought of it as a fun term before.

We use "park" as "I will park the car" not park as in "amusement park"

[BobbyTables2]

Why isn’t the “pantry” called the “food store”?

[justinclift]

Does your pantry have a cashier and let you buy stuff there?

Because a food store sounds like it does.

[jjtheblunt]

yeah but syntactically "car park" gets used like a noun phrase, not verb phrase, which was (to your point really) what had me think "huh?" momentarily.