place vs stagger

place

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

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

  • To place-kick (a goal). 

noun
  • 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. 

  • A location or position in space. 

  • 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. 

stagger

verb
  • To arrange similar objects such that each is ahead or above and to one side of the next. 

  • To cease to stand firm; to begin to give way; to fail. 

  • To begin to doubt and waver in purposes; to become less confident or determined; to hesitate. 

  • To arrange (a series of parts) on each side of a median line alternately, as the spokes of a wheel or the rivets of a boiler seam. 

  • In standing or walking, to sway from one side to the other as if about to fall; to stand or walk unsteadily; to reel or totter. 

  • To cause to doubt and waver; to make to hesitate; to make less steady or confident; to shock. 

  • To schedule in intervals or at different times. 

  • To cause to reel or totter. 

noun
  • An unsteady movement of the body in walking or standing as if one were about to fall; a reeling motion. 

  • The spacing out of various actions over time. 

  • One who attends a stag night. 

  • The horizontal positioning of a biplane, triplane, or multiplane's wings in relation to one another. 

  • Bewilderment; perplexity. 

  • The difference in circumference between the left and right tires on a racing vehicle. It is used on oval tracks to make the car turn better in the corners. 

  • A disease of horses and other animals, attended by reeling, unsteady gait or sudden falling. 

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