English Explanatory Dictionary

span

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. The full width of an open hand from the end of the thumb to the end of the little finger used as an informal unit of length.
  2. Any of various traditional units of length approximating this distance, especially the English handspan of 9 inches forming ⅛ fathom and equivalent to 22.86 cm.
  3. A small space or a brief portion of time.
  4. A portion of something by length; a subsequence.
  5. The spread or extent of an arch or between its abutments, or of a beam, girder, truss, roof, bridge, or the like, between supports.
  6. The length of a cable, wire, rope, chain between two consecutive supports.
  7. A rope having its ends made fast so that a purchase can be hooked to the bight; also, a rope made fast in the center so that both ends can be used.
  8. A pair of horses or other animals driven together; usually, such a pair of horses when similar in color, form, and action.
  9. The space of all linear combinations of vectors within a set.
  10. The time required to execute a parallel algorithm on an infinite number of processors, i.e. the shortest distance across a directed acyclic graph representing the computation steps.
  11. wingspan of a plane or bird
verb
  1. To extend across (a gap or space between two sides).
  2. To cover or extend over (an area or distance).
  3. (transitive) To extend through (a period of time).
  4. To measure by the span of the hand with the fingers extended, or with the fingers encompassing the object.
  5. To generate an entire space by means of linear combinations.
  6. To be matched, as horses.
  7. To fetter, as a horse; to hobble.
verb
  1. simple past of spin
name
  1. A surname.
name
  1. Acronym of Suicide Prevention Advocacy Network.
  2. Acronym of Switched Port Analyzer, a Cisco technology.

Pronunciation

/spæn/ /spæːn/ en-us-span.ogg

Word forms

span spans spanning spanned spun

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *(s)pend-der. Proto-Germanic *spannō Old English spann Middle English spanne English span From Middle English spanne, from Old English spann, from Proto-Germanic *spannō (“span, handbreadth”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)pend- (“to stretch”). Cognate with Dutch span, spanne, German Spanne. The sense “pair of horses” is probably from Old English ġespan, ġespann (“a joining; a fastening together; clasp; yoke”), from Proto-West Germanic [Term?]. Cognate with Dutch gespan, German Gespann.

Related words

spang spank yepsen chord span-new

Derived words

arm span attention span clearspan cospan drawspan endspan eyespan forspan gerospan handspan healthspan inspan knot span legspan life span lifespan lifting span linear span linkspan long-span mainspan makespan memory span midspan outspan overspan palmspan span block span counter span iron spank spanless spannable spanned → unspanned spanner spanning → multi- overspanning span of control span roof span shackle Spansule spanwise spanworm spick-and-span subspan supraspan tetraspan timespan time-span reduction wakespan widespan wingspan wheelspan

Translations

Finnish: jänneväli Hungarian: szárnytávolság Hungarian: fesztávolság Māori: tāwhana Russian: пролёт Swedish: spann Ukrainian: перекриття́
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
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