1. A place where passengers and goods are or can be landed or disembarked.
1512. Act 4 Hen. VIII., c. 1 § 1. The Frenchemen … knowe aswell every haven and creke within the sayde Countie as every landyng place.
1620–55. I. Jones, Stone-Heng (1725), 13. They were imbarked, dis-imbarked, and brought from their Landing Place to Salisbury Plain.
1687. Lond. Gaz., No. 2221/8. Lost…, between Richmond and Putney Landing-place, a Point Crevat and Cuffs.
1748. Anson’s Voy., II. vi. 191. Pilots were ordered to … conduct him to the most convenient landing-place.
1840. R. H. Dana, Bef. Mast, vii. 15. Waiting at the landing-place for our boat to come ashore.
b. A platform at a railway station.
1882. in Ogilvie.
2. = LANDING vbl. sb. 6 (now the usual word).
1611. Cotgr., Aire,… the halfe-pace, or landing place of a half-pace staire.
1625. Bacon, Ess., Building (Arb.), 550. The Staires likewise … let them bee vpon a Faire open Newell, and finely raild in … And a very Faire Landing Place at the Top.
1765. Foote, Commissary, I. Wks. 1799, II. 7. Simon … flew up stairs, fell over the landing-place, and quite barr’d up the way.
1840. Dickens, Barn. Rudge, ix. His stealthy footsteps on the landing-place outside.
1849. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., iii. I. 352. The staircases and landing places are not wanting in grandeur.
attrib. 1852. R. S. Surtees, Sponge’s Sp. Tour, xxxiv. (1893), 193. The dinner and ball invitations gradually dwindled away, till he became a mere stop-gap at the one, and a landing-place appendage at the other.
3. transf. and fig. (in prec. senses). A place at which one arrives; a stopping- or resting-place.
1727. Arbuthnot, Tables Anc. Coins, etc. vii. 151. What the Romans called Vestibulum was no part of the House, but the Court or Landing-place between it and the Street.
1850. Tennyson, In Mem., xlvii. He seeks at least Upon the last and sharpest height … Some landing-place, to clasp and say, ‘Farewell! We lose ourselves in light.’
1861. Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxf., I. Introd. 2. Tom was … beginning to feel that it was high time for him to be getting to regular work again of some sort. A landing place is a famous thing, but it is only enjoyable for a time by any mortal who deserves one at all.
1884. J. Tait, Mind in Matter (1892), 245. When the conscience-troubles … lead to scepticism, the ultimate landing-place … is superstition.
