different between place vs sphere

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.

English

Alternative forms

• sphære (archaic)
• sphear (archaic)
• spheare (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English spere, from Old French sphere, from Late Latin sph?ra, earlier Latin sphaera (“ball, globe, celestial sphere”), from Ancient Greek ?????? (sphaîra, “ball, globe”), of unknown origin. Not related to superficially similar Persian ????? (sepehr, “sky”) (Can this⁽⁺⁾ etymology be sourced?).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /sf??/
• (US) enPR: sfîr, IPA^(key): /sf??/
• Rhymes: -??(r)

Noun

sphere (plural spheres)

1. (mathematics) A regular three-dimensional object in which every cross-section is a circle; the figure described by the revolution of a circle about its diameter [from 14th c.].
2. A spherical physical object; a globe or ball. [from 14th c.]
   • 2011, Piers Sellers, The Guardian, 6 July:

     So your orientation changes a little bit but it sinks in that the world is a sphere, and you're going around it, sometimes under it, sideways, or over it.

3. (astronomy, now rare) The apparent outer limit of space; the edge of the heavens, imagined as a hollow globe within which celestial bodies appear to be embedded. [from 14th c.]
   • 1635, John Donne, "His parting form her":

     Though cold and darkness longer hang somewhere, / Yet Phoebus equally lights all the Sphere.

4. (historical, astronomy, mythology) Any of the concentric hollow transparent globes formerly believed to rotate around the Earth, and which carried the heavenly bodies; there were originally believed to be eight, and later nine and ten; friction between them was thought to cause a harmonious sound (the music of the spheres). [from 14th c.]
   • , vol.1, p.153:

     It is more simplicitie to teach our children […] [t]he knowledge of the starres, and the motion of the eighth spheare, before their owne.

   • 1646, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, I.6:

     They understood not the motion of the eighth sphear from West to East, and so conceived the longitude of the Stars invariable.

5. (mythology) An area of activity for a planet; or by extension, an area of influence for a god, hero etc. [from 14th c.]
6. (figuratively) The region in which something or someone is active; one's province, domain. [from 17th c.]
   • 1946, Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, I.20:

     They thought – originally on grounds derived from religion – that each thing or person had its or his proper sphere, to overstep which is ‘unjust’.

7. (geometry) The set of all points in three-dimensional Euclidean space (or n-dimensional space, in topology) that are a fixed distance from a fixed point [from 20th c.].
8. (logic) The extension of a general conception, or the totality of the individuals or species to which it may be applied.

Synonyms

• (object): ball, globe, orb
• (region of activity): area, domain, field, orbit, sector
• (in geometry): 3-sphere (geometry), 2-sphere (topology)
• (astronomy: apparent surface of the heavens): See celestial sphere
• (astronomy: anything visible on the apparent surface of the heavens): See celestial body

Derived terms

• blogosphere
• ensphere
• sphere of influence
• sphere of interest

Related terms

• atmosphere
• hemisphere
• ionosphere
• planisphere
• spherical
• spheroid
• stratosphere
• troposphere

Translations

Verb

sphere (third-person singular simple present spheres, present participle sphering, simple past and past participle sphered)

1. (transitive) To place in a sphere, or among the spheres; to ensphere.
2. (transitive) To make round or spherical; to perfect.

See also

• ball (in topology)
• Mathworld article on the sphere
• PlanetMath article on the sphere

Anagrams

• Hesper, herpes, pesher, pheers

Middle French

Alternative forms

• sphaere
• spere

Noun

sphere f (plural spheres)

1. sphere (shape)

Descendants

• French: sphère

Old French

Alternative forms

• espere
• esphere
• spere

Noun

sphere f (oblique plural spheres, nominative singular sphere, nominative plural spheres)

1. sphere (shape)

Descendants

• English: sphere
• French: sphère

References

• Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IX^e au XV^e siècle (1881) (sphere, supplement)