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Description: Objects and places are foundational spatial domains represented in human symbolic expressions, like drawings, which show a prioritization of depicting small-scale object information over the large-scale place information in which objects are situated. Is there a similar object-over-place bias in language when extending the meaning of novel nouns? Across two preregistered experiments, adults and 3- to 4-year-old children were asked to either extend a novel noun or match pictures using object or place information dissociated from figure and ground information. While adults showed an object-over-place bias in both word-learning and matching contexts, young children showed this bias in the word-learning context only. Spatial domains may confer specific and foundational biases for word learning.