To be PLACED. This expression is frequently used in naval and military matters, to signify the appointment or reduction of officers. Hence to be placed upon full or half-pay. It is more generally applicable to the latter case.
PLACER, Fr. to fix, to settle. This word is used among the French, as with us, to express the act of providing for a person by appointing him to a desirable situation, viz. Placer un jeune homme dans un regiment; to get a young man a commission in a regiment.
Un cheval bien PLACE, Fr. A horse is said, among the French, to be well placed, when his forehead runs perpendicularly down between the nostrils.
PLAFOND, Fr. The ceiling.
PLAFONNER, Fr. to ceil or adorn the upper part of a room, &c.
PLAGE, Fr. flat shore, or extent of coast, where there are no creeks, &c. for vessels to ride in.
PLAIE, Fr. a wound or scar.
PLAN, ground plot, or ichnography, in fortification, is the representation of the first or fundamental tract of a work, showing the length of its lines, the quantity of its angles, the breadth of the ditches, thickness of the rampart, parapets, and the distance of one part from another: so that a plan represents a work, such as it would appear if cut equal with the level of the horizon, or cut off at the foundation: but it marks neither the heights nor depths of the several parts of the works: that is properly profile, which expresses only the heights, breadths, and depths, without taking notice of the lengths. As architects, before they lay the foundation of their edifice make their design on paper, by which means they find out their faults, so an engineer, before tracing his works on the ground, should make plans of his designs upon paper, that he may do nothing without serious deliberation.
Exact plans are very useful for generals or governors, in either attacking or defending a place, in chusing a camp, determining attacks, conducting the approaches, or in examining the strength and weakness of a place; especially such plans as represent a place with the country about it, shewing the rivers, fountains, marshes, ditches, valleys, mountains, woods, houses, churches, defiles, roads, and other particulars, which appertain to it.
PLAN of comparison, a geometrical sketch of any fortress and adjacent country within cannon shot, in which the different levels of every principal point are expressed.