Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An area with definite or indefinite boundaries; a portion of space.
  • noun Room or space, especially adequate space.
  • noun The particular portion of space occupied by or allocated to a person or thing.
  • noun A building or an area set aside for a specified purpose.
  • noun A dwelling; a house.
  • noun A business establishment or office.
  • noun A locality, such as a town or city.
  • noun A public square or street with houses in a town.
  • noun A space in which one person, such as a passenger or spectator, can sit or stand.
  • noun A setting for one person at a table.
  • noun A position regarded as belonging to someone or something else; stead.
  • noun A particular point that one has reached, as in a book.
  • noun A particular spot, as on the body.
  • noun The proper or designated role or function.
  • noun The proper or customary position or order.
  • noun A suitable setting or occasion.
  • noun The appropriate right or duty.
  • noun Social station.
  • noun A particular situation or circumstance.
  • noun High rank or status.
  • noun A job, post, or position.
  • noun Relative position in a series; standing.
  • noun Games Second position for betting purposes, as in a horserace.
  • noun The specified stage in a list of points to be made, as in an argument.
  • noun Mathematics A position in a numeral or series.
  • intransitive verb To put in or as if in a particular place or position; set.
  • intransitive verb To put in a specified relation or order.
  • intransitive verb To offer for consideration.
  • intransitive verb To find accommodation or employment for.
  • intransitive verb To put into a particular condition.
  • intransitive verb To arrange for the publication or display of.
  • intransitive verb To appoint to a post.
  • intransitive verb To rank in an order or sequence.
  • intransitive verb To estimate.
  • intransitive verb To identify or classify in a particular context.
  • intransitive verb To give an order for.
  • intransitive verb To apply or arrange for.
  • intransitive verb To make or obtain a connection for (a telephone call).
  • intransitive verb To sell (a new issue of stock, bonds, or other securities).
  • intransitive verb To adjust (one's voice) for the best possible effects.
  • intransitive verb To be among those who finish a competition or race, especially to finish second.
  • idiom (all over the place) In or to many locations; everywhere.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English plæce and Old French place, open space (from Medieval Latin placea, from Vulgar Latin *plattea), both from Latin platēa, broad street, from Greek plateia (hodos), broad (street), feminine of platus; see plat- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English place, from Old English plæse, plætse, plæċe ("place, an open space, street"), from Latin platea ("plaza, wide street"), from Ancient Greek πλατεῖα (plateia), shortening of πλατεῖα ὁδός (plateia hodos, "broad way"). Reinforced in Middle English by Old French place ("open space"). Displaced native Middle English lough, loogh, loȝ ("place, stead") (from Old English lōh ("place, stead")), Middle English stede ("place, location") (from Old English stede ("place, stead")), Middle English stowe ("place") (from Old English stōw ("place, locality, site")).

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Examples

  • Moving on… happy place, happy place… sittin here eating frozen snickers bars and drinking mountain dew and talking on the phone to my friend Anthony.

    aleighk21 Diary Entry aleighk21 2003

  • But Barzillai felt, and felt rightly, that in his circumstances, the place in which he had been brought up -- "_his own place_" -- was the best place for him.

    Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters George Milligan

  • From time to time even now readjustments are made in the details of all three indexes, the fossil, the modern, and the embryonic, the method of rearrangement being charmingly simple: _just taking a card out of one place and putting it into another place_ where we may think it more properly belongs.

    Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation George McCready Price

  • "The lowest place, _the lowest place_, I can abide no other."

    The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 1 of 4 American Anti-Slavery Society

  • "The lowest place, _the lowest place_, I can abide no other."

    The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus American Anti-Slavery Society

  • And as it gets hold of you it crowds your mind and heart and life till every other is either crowded out, or crowded to a lower place; _out_, if it jars; _lower place_, if it agrees, for every agreeing bit yields to the lead of this tremendous message.

    Quiet Talks on John's Gospel 1897

  • The principal place of resort of this class is Marina Rotche, lying about two versts from Moscow, and thither I drove, attended by a _valet de place_.

    George Borrow The Man and His Books Edward Thomas 1897

  • Arras was a famous Jacobin centre, and from the balcony of this theatre, Lebon, one of the Jacobins, directed the executions, which took place abundantly on the pretty _place_.

    A Day's Tour A Journey through France and Belgium by Calais, Tournay, Orchies, Douai, Arras, Béthune, Lille, Comines, Ypres, Hazebrouck, Berg Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald 1879

  • The name of the place, -- or rather neighborhood, for I don't know where the _place_ actually is -- there are three places, and they are all four or five miles off -- Mill Village, and Pemunk, and Sandon; the name of the neighborhood, -- Brickfield Farms, comes from there having been brickmaking done here at one time; but it was given up.

    The Other Girls 1865

  • The trite maxim, * A place for everything, and everything in its place*, so commends itself to the sense of fitness, as hardly to need exposition or enforcement; yet while no maxim is more generally admitted, scarce any is so frequently violated in practice.

    A Manual of Moral Philosophy 1852

Comments

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  • All that any of us may know of ourselves is to be known in relation to this place. Wendell Berry "A Native Hill"

    July 19, 2008

  • When I have thought of the welfare of the earth, the problems of its health and preservation, the care of its life, I have had this place before me ... Wendell Berry "A Native Hill"

    July 19, 2008

  • rank, perfection

    July 23, 2009