Place

How to spell place

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce place

What does place mean?

1. nounA particular position, point, or area in space.
2. verbTo put something in a particular position.

Place in a sentence

• noun

  The café on the corner is our usual meeting place.

• verb

  Please place the documents on the manager's desk.

• noun

  She found a quiet place to read during her lunch break.

• verb

  The staff carefully place each glass back on the shelf.

Where does place come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word place comes from the Latin platea, meaning a broad street or an open courtyard, which itself was borrowed from the Greek plateia (hodos), meaning a wide way or broad road. Old English absorbed an early form, and the word was strongly reinforced in the Middle Ages by Old French place, which carried the sense of an open square or a spot where something stands. Over time the meaning broadened from a literal open area to any particular spot, position, or rank. The same root still surfaces in related words such as plaza and piazza, which kept the original idea of a wide public square more visibly than place did. Because the spelling settled with that quiet -ace ending borrowed through French, it is one of the easier common words to write correctly.

How the word is built

• place (from Latin platea: broad street, open space)