place
Meanings
- An area; somewhere within an area.
- An open space, particularly a city square, market square, or courtyard.
- A street, sometimes but not always surrounding a public place, square, or plaza of the same name.
- An inhabited area: a village, town, or city.
- Any area of the earth: a region.
- The area one occupies, particularly somewhere to sit.
- The area where one lives: one's home, formerly (chiefly) country estates and farms.
- An area of the body, especially the skin.
- An area to urinate and defecate: an outhouse or lavatory.
- An area to fight: a battlefield or the contested ground in a battle.
- A location or position in space.
- A particular location in a book or document, particularly the current location of a reader
- To put (someone or something) in a specific location.
- To earn a given spot in a competition; to rank at a certain position ((often followed by an ordinal)).
- To finish second, especially of horses or dogs.
- To remember where and when (an object or person) has been previously encountered.
- To vouch for someone's alibi.
- To sing (a note) with the correct pitch.
- To make.
- To bet.
- To recruit or match an appropriate person for a job, or a home for an animal for adoption, etc.
- To place-kick (a goal).
- To assign (more or less value) to something.
- A surname.
- An unincorporated community in the town of Farmington, Strafford County, New Hampshire, United States.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
From Middle English place, conflation of Old English plæċe (“place, an open space, street”) and Old French place (“place, an open space”), both from Latin platēa (“plaza, wide street”), from Ancient Greek πλατεῖα (plateîa), shortening of πλατεῖα ὁδός (plateîa hodós, “broad way”), from Proto-Indo-European *pleth₂- (“to spread”), extended form of *pleh₂- (“flat”). Displaced native Old English stōw, stede (partially), and -ern. Compare also English pleck (“plot of ground”), West Frisian plak (“place, spot, location”), Dutch plek (“place, spot, patch”). Doublet of piatza, piazza, and plaza. In the etymological chain from Latin platēa, note Old French place, which has multiple descendants — including German Platz, itself with many descendants (e.g., Russian плац (plac)). Also note a more distant chain node Ancient Greek πλατύς (platús), whence English Plato and English plate (via Latin).