different between merit vs place

English

Etymology

The noun is derived from Middle English merit, merite (“quality of person’s character or conduct deserving of reward or punishment; such reward or punishment; excellence, worthiness; benefit; right to be rewarded for spiritual service; retribution at doomsday; virtue through which Jesus Christ brings about salvation; virtue possessed by a holy person; power of a pagan deity”), from Anglo-Norman merit, merite, Old French merite (“moral worth, reward; merit”) (modern French mérite), from Latin meritum (“that which one deserves, deserts; benefit, reward, merit; service; kindness; importance, value, worth; blame, demerit, fault; grounds, reason”), neuter of meritus (“deserved, earned, obtained; due, proper, right; deserving, meritorious”), perfect passive participle of mere? (“to deserve, earn, obtain, merit; to earn a living”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)mer- (“to allot, assign”). The English word is probably cognate with Ancient Greek ????? (méros, “component, part; portion, share; destiny, fate, lot”) and cognate with Old Occitan merit.

The verb is derived from Middle French meriter, Old French meriter (“to deserve, merit”) (modern French mériter), from merite: see further above. The word is cognate with Italian meritare (“to deserve, merit; to be worth; to earn”), Latin merit?re (“to earn regularly; to serve as a soldier”), Spanish meritar (“to deserve, merit; to earn”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: m?r??t, IPA^(key): /?m???t/, /?m???t/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?m???t/, /?m???t/
• Rhymes: -???t
• Hyphenation: me?rit

Noun

merit (countable and uncountable, plural merits)

1. (countable) A claim to commendation or a reward.
2. (countable) A mark or token of approbation or to recognize excellence.

   Antonym: demerit
3. (countable, uncountable) Something deserving or worthy of positive recognition or reward.

   Synonyms: excellence, value, worth

   Antonym: demerit
4. (uncountable, Buddhism, Jainism) The sum of all the good deeds that a person does which determines the quality of the person's next state of existence and contributes to the person's growth towards enlightenment.
5. (uncountable, law) Usually in the plural form the merits: the substantive rightness or wrongness of a legal argument, a lawsuit, etc., as opposed to technical matters such as the admissibility of evidence or points of legal procedure; (by extension) the overall good or bad quality, or rightness or wrongness, of some other thing.
6. (countable, obsolete) The quality or state of deserving retribution, whether reward or punishment.

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

Verb

merit (third-person singular simple present merits, present participle meriting, simple past and past participle merited)

1. (transitive) To deserve, to earn.
2. (intransitive) To be deserving or worthy.
3. (transitive, obsolete, rare) To reward.

Conjugation

Derived terms

Translations

References

Further reading

• merit (Buddhism) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• merit (Catholicism) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• merit (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• merit in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• merit in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• merit at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams

• Terim, ermit, miter, mitre, remit, timer

Ladin

Etymology

From Latin meritum.

Pronunciation

Noun

merit m (plural meric)

1. merit

Romanian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [?merit]

Etymology 1

From French mérite.

Noun

merit n (plural merite)

1. merit

Declension

Etymology 2

Verb

merit

1. first-person singular present indicative/subjunctive of merita

English

Alternative forms

• pleace (some English dialects: 18th–19th centuries; Scots: until the 17th century)

Pronunciation

• enPR: pl?s, IPA^(key): /ple?s/, [p?l?e?s]
• Rhymes: -e?s
• Homophone: plaice

Etymology 1

From Middle English place, conflation of Old English plæse, plætse, plæ?e (“place, an open space, street”) and Old French place (“place, an open space”), both from Latin platea (“plaza, wide street”), from Ancient Greek ??????? (plateîa), shortening of ??????? ???? (plateîa hodós, “broad way”), from Proto-Indo-European *plat- (“to spread”), extended form of *pleh?- (“flat”). Displaced native Old English st?w. Compare also English pleck (“plot of ground”), West Frisian plak (“place, spot, location”), Dutch plek (“place, spot, patch”). Doublet of piatza, piazza, and plaza.

Noun

place (plural places)

1. (physical) An area; somewhere within an area.
   1. An open space, particularly a city square, market square, or courtyard.
      • c. 1590, William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act IV, scene iv

        Ay, sir, the other squirrel was stolen from me by the hangman's boys in the market-place

   2. (often in street names or addresses) A street, sometimes but not always surrounding a public place, square, or plaza of the same name.

   3. An inhabited area: a village, town, or city.
   4. Any area of the earth: a region.
   5. The area one occupies, particularly somewhere to sit.

   6. The area where one lives: one's home, formerly (chiefly) country estates and farms.
      • 1853, Charles Dickens, Bleak House, ch 2:

        My Lady Dedlock has been down at what she calls, in familiar conversation, her "place" in Lincolnshire.

   7. An area of the skin.
   8. (euphemistic slang) An area to urinate and defecate: an outhouse or lavatory.
      • 1901, John Stephen Farmer & al., Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present, Vol. V, page 220:

        Place,... (2) a jakes, or house of ease.

      • 1951, William Styron, Lie Down in Darkness, Ch. ii, page 59:

        ‘I guess I'll take this opportunity to go to the place’...
        ‘She means the little girls room.’

   9. (obsolete) An area to fight: a battlefield or the contested ground in a battle.
2. A location or position in space.
3. A particular location in a book or document, particularly the current location of a reader.
4. (obsolete) A passage or extract from a book or document.
5. (obsolete, rhetoric) A topic.
6. A frame of mind.

7. (chess, obsolete) A chess position; a square of the chessboard.
8. (social) A responsibility or position in an organization.
   1. A role or purpose; a station.
      • 1625, Francis Bacon, Of Great Place

        Men in great place are thrice servants.
   2. The position of a contestant in a competition.

   3. (horse-racing) The position of first, second, or third at the finish, especially the second position.

   4. The position as a member of a sports team.

9. (obsolete) A fortified position: a fortress, citadel, or walled town.
10. Numerically, the column counting a certain quantity.

11. Ordinal relation; position in the order of proceeding.
    • a. 1788, Mather Byles, quoted in The Life of James Otis by William Tudor

      In the first place, I do not understand politics; in the second place, you all do, every man and mother's son of you; in the third place, you have politics all the week, pray let one day in the seven be devoted to religion […]

12. Reception; effect; implying the making room for.

    • My word hath no place in you.

Synonyms

• (market square): courtyard, piazza, plaza, square
• (somewhere to sit): seat
• (outhouse or lavatory): See Thesaurus:bathroom
• (location): location, position, situation, stead, stell, spot
• (frame of mind): frame of mind, mindset, mood

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Related terms

Descendants

• Pijin: ples
• Tok Pisin: ples

Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English placen, from the noun (see above).

Verb

place (third-person singular simple present places, present participle placing, simple past and past participle placed)

1. (transitive) To put (an object or person) in a specific location.

2. (intransitive) To earn a given spot in a competition.
   1. (intransitive, racing) To finish second, especially of horses or dogs.

3. (transitive) To remember where and when (an object or person) has been previously encountered.

4. (transitive, passive) To achieve (a certain position, often followed by an ordinal) as in a horse race.

5. (transitive) To sing (a note) with the correct pitch.
6. (transitive) To arrange for or to make (a bet).

7. (transitive) To recruit or match an appropriate person for a job.

8. (sports, transitive) To place-kick (a goal).

Conjugation

Additional archaic forms include the second-person singular past tense placedst.

Synonyms

• (to earn a given spot):
• (to put in a specific location): deposit, lay, lay down, put down
• (to remember where and when something or someone was previously encountered):
• (passive, to achieve a certain position): achieve, make
• (to sing (a note) with the correct pitch): reach
• (to arrange for, make (a bet)):
• (to recruit or match an appropriate person):

Derived terms

Translations

Anagrams

• Capel, Caple, capel, caple, clape

Czech

Alternative forms

• placu (locative singular)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [?plat?s?]
• Rhymes: -ats?
• Hyphenation: pla?ce

Noun

place

1. vocative/locative singular of plac

Anagrams

• palce, palec

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /plas/
• Homophones: placent, places

Etymology 1

From Old French place, from Latin platea, from Ancient Greek ??????? (plateîa).

Noun

place f (plural places)

1. place, square, plaza, piazza
2. place, space, room
3. place, seat

Derived terms

Descendants

• Haitian Creole: laplas (with definite article la)
  • ? English: laplas
• ? Moroccan Arabic: ?????? (bla?a)

Etymology 2

See the etymology of the main entry.

Verb

place

1. first/third-person singular present indicative of placer
2. first/third-person singular present subjunctive of placer
3. second-person singular imperative of placer

Further reading

• “place” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Anagrams

• clape, Le Cap

Interlingua

Verb

place

1. present of placer
2. imperative of placer

Latin

Verb

plac?

1. second-person singular present active imperative of place?

Old French

Alternative forms

• plache, plaise, plas

Etymology

From Latin platea.

Noun

place f (oblique plural places, nominative singular place, nominative plural places)

1. place; location

Descendants

• French: place
  • Haitian Creole: laplas (with definite article la)
    • ? English: laplas
• ? Irish: plás (through Anglo-Norman)
• ? Middle Dutch: plaetse
  • Dutch: plaats
  • Limburgish: plaotsj, plaatsj
• ? Middle High German: blaz, plaz
  • German: Platz
    • ? Czech: plac
    • ? Estonian: plats
    • ? Macedonian: ???? (plac)
    • ? Polish: plac
      • ? Russian: ???? (plac)
    • ? Serbo-Croatian:
      • Cyrillic: ????
      • Latin: plac
  • Luxembourgish: Plaz
• ? Middle Low German: platse, platze
  • ? Old Norse: plaz
    • Danish: plads
    • Faroese: pláss
    • Norwegian: plass
    • Old Swedish: platz
      • Swedish: plats
    • Westrobothnian: plass
• ? Middle English: place (conflated with Old English plæse, plætse, plæ?e)
  • English: place
    • Pijin: ples
    • Tok Pisin: ples
• ? Moroccan Arabic: ?????? (bla?a)
• Norman: plache (through Old Northern French plache)
• Walloon: plaece
• ? Welsh: plas

References

• Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IX^e au XV^e siècle (1881) (place, supplement)
• place on the Anglo-Norman On-Line Hub

Polish

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?pla.t?s?/

Noun

place m inan

1. nominative/accusative/vocative plural of plac

Romanian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [?plat??e]

Verb

place

1. second-person singular imperative of pl?cea
2. third-person singular present indicative of pl?cea

Spanish

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): (Spain) /?pla?e/, [?pla.?e]
• IPA^(key): (Latin America) /?plase/, [?pla.se]

Verb

place

1. Third-person singular (él, ella, also used with usted^?) present indicative form of placer.
2. Informal second-person singular (tú) affirmative imperative form of placer.