I'm trying to enter antonyms by part of speech into a database (for natural language processing) and have run into a problem with "indoors" vs "outdoors". One dictionary lists parts of speech for "outdoors" as adverb, noun, and adjective; another, as just adverb and adjective; a third, as adverb and noun.
The first dictionary lists "indoors" only as adverb; the second, as adverb and adjective; the third, only as adverb. None of them list "indoors" as a noun.
I plan on ignoring the dictionaries and entering the words as antonyms of each other as nouns, adjectives and adverbs, but before I do…
Is there really some reason that "indoors" can't be a noun? (E.g.: "My wife loves the outdoors, but I love the indoors.")
Best Answer
At first I thought you had a point. But then as I thought about it, I realized that this usage (I love the indoors) is quirky. Most people would say I love staying indoors.
According to etymonline.com, outdoors has come to mean "open spaces" as a noun since 1857. Indoors is first attested 1799 in George Washington's writing.
Indoors simply isn't widely used by native english speakers as a noun. (Yet.)
That being said, there might be something to what you're saying. This Google Ngram clearly shows that outdoors is used as a noun far more frequently, but there are some more recent usages of the indoors that aren't purely adjectival (ie. the indoors food market) and do seem to use indoors as a noun. I suppose it remains to be seen if dictionaries pick up on this and agree that it's not just a poetic/novel turn of phrase or grammatical error.