Abstract:

 This paper clarifies a misleading in the definition of physical field made by authoritative English dictionaries. The Longman Modern English Dictionary,  the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, the MerriamWebsters Advanced Learners English Dictionary,  the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Applied Geophysics as SEGs standard for terms particular to geophysical technology,  Chinese geophysical textbooks, monographs, and dictionaries  have defined physical field as an area, a space or a region. The definitions differ significantly from another definition in the theory of fields and another geophysical literature, which is usually given as an effect or a force. Defining the physical field as an area, a space or a region confuses the field itself with the space throughout which the field exists, and is not a standard physics definition of a field. A new definition of the physical field based on the theory of fields is proposed as follows: a physical effect existing in a space.

Key words: physical field, gravity field, definition