take place

verb

Etymology: A verb phrase, with place functioning as the direct object of the transitive verb take.

1. To happen or to occur.

   “Unfortunately, the meeting never took place.”

   “The wedding was to take place in the rose garden.”

2. To take precedence or priority.

   “I know him a notorious liar, / Think him a great way fool, solely a coward; / Yet these fixed evils sit so fit in him, / That they take place, when virtue’s steely bones / Look bleak i’ the cold wind […]”

   “As a British Free-Holder, I should not scruple taking place of a French Marquis; and when I see one of my Countreymen amusing himself in his little Cabbage-Garden, I naturally look upon him as a greater Person than the Owner of the richest Vineyard in Champagne.”

3. To take effect; to prevail.

   “But he to shifte their curious request, / Gan causen, why she could not come in place; / Her crased helth, her late recourse to rest, / And humid euening ill for sicke folkes cace, / But none of those excuses could take place; / Ne would they eate, till she in presence came.”

   “[…] the moderate advice took place, and the people, upon the Kings engagement of soon remedying their miseries, return’d with blessings for him […]”

4. To sit in a particular location, take one's place.

   “King Henry VIII takes place under the cloth of state; Cardinal Wolsey and Cardinal Campeius sit under him as judges. Queen Katharine takes place some distance from King Henry VIII.”

   “Cedric himself coldly nodded in answer to the Jew's repeated salutations, and signed to him to take place at the lower end of the table, where, however, no one offered to make room for him.”