I'm studying phrasal verbs from a book called MacMillan Phrasal Verbs Plus, and I'm studying the "Down" particle. In a page of the book, there is a diagram showing the various meanings of the "Down" particle and there are 2 sentences showing those apparently different meanings, shown in the image below, however it seems to me that those sentences have the same meaning, don't they?
Do the two sentences have the same meaning?
Do the verbs "set" and "place" mean the same thing in those sentences?
Sentence 1: Placing something on a surface
Sentence 2: Set something on a surface
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UPDATE #1
Due to FumbleFingers's suggestion the question has been moved here
Best Answer
In this particular context involving an object being moved onto a surface, "set" and "place" mean very close to the same thing.
My reaction is that "set" implies a slightly higher level of care or attention than "place" implies, or that the process is a slightly neater or more controlled one. For example, if someone tells you to "set" a ball on a table, I would say that it implies that the ball should be placed on the table in such a way that it doesn't roll around after you release it. "Place" also implies a relatively attentive process (certainly in comparison to "put"), but perhaps not quite as much as "set." The difference is really minimal.
Of course, in other contexts, these verbs might not be so close. If we get rid of the surface, for example, things change. You might "place" your dirty laundry in a laundry bag (although even this is a bit of a formal way of saying it), but it would sound really weird to "set" your laundry in the bag. Perhaps the reason that this doesn't work is that, as noted above, "set" is a more careful process that probably gets the object into a neat and still position, as would usually occur on a surface.