place vs scene

place

noun
  • A location or position in space. 

  • An inhabited area: a village, town, or city. 

  • Numerically, the column counting a certain quantity. 

  • A state of mind. 

  • The position of first, second, or third at the finish, especially the second position. 

  • An area of the body, especially the skin. 

  • An open space, particularly a city square, market square, or courtyard. 

  • The position of a contestant in a competition. 

  • Reception; effect; implying the making room for. 

  • The area one occupies, particularly somewhere to sit. 

  • A role or purpose; a station. 

  • A street, sometimes but not always surrounding a public place, square, or plaza of the same name. 

  • The area where one lives: one's home, formerly (chiefly) country estates and farms. 

  • A particular location in a book or document, particularly the current location of a reader. 

  • The position as a member of a sports team. 

  • Ordinal relation; position in the order of proceeding. 

  • An area to urinate and defecate: an outhouse or lavatory. 

  • Any area of the earth: a region. 

verb
  • To arrange for or to make (a bet). 

  • To finish second, especially of horses or dogs. 

  • To sing (a note) with the correct pitch. 

  • To earn a given spot in a competition. 

  • To rank at (a certain position, often followed by an ordinal) as in a horse race. 

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

  • To establish a call (connection by telephone or similar). 

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

  • To recruit or match an appropriate person for a job, or a home for an animal for adoption, etc. 

  • To place-kick (a goal). 

scene

noun
  • The location, time, circumstances, etc., in which something occurs, or in which the action of a story, play, or the like, is set up 

  • A youth subculture that was popular in Canada and the United States in the 2000s and early 2010s. 

  • The decorations; furnishings and backgrounds of a stage, representing the place in which the action of a play is set 

  • A landscape, or part of a landscape; scenery. 

  • A part of a dramatic work that is set in the same place or time. In the theatre, generally a number of scenes constitute an act. 

  • The location of an event that attracts attention. 

  • An element of fiction writing. 

  • An exhibition of passionate or strong feeling before others, creating embarrassment or disruption; often, an artificial or affected action, or course of action, done for effect; a theatrical display 

  • A combination of objects or events in view or happening at a given moment at a particular place. 

  • A social environment consisting of an informal, vague group of people with a uniting interest; their sphere of activity; a subculture. 

verb
  • To exhibit as a scene; to make a scene of; to display. 

How often have the words place and scene occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )