span

Meanings

Noun

• The space from the thumb to the end of the little finger when extended; nine inches; an eighth of a fathom.
• A small space or a brief portion of time.
• A portion of something by length; a subsequence.
• The spread or extent of an arch or between its abutments, or of a beam, girder, truss, roof, bridge, or the like, between supports.
• The length of a cable, wire, rope, chain between two consecutive supports.
• 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.
• A pair of horses or other animals driven together; usually, such a pair of horses when similar in color, form, and action.
• The space of all linear combinations of something.
• 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.

Verb

• To extend through the distance between or across.
• To extend through (a time period).
• To measure by the span of the hand with the fingers extended, or with the fingers encompassing the object.
• To generate an entire space by means of linear combinations.
• To be matched, as horses.
• To fetter, as a horse; to hobble.
• Past of spin

Origin

• From Middle English spanne, from Old English spann, from Proto-Germanic *spannō. Cognate with Dutch span, spanne, German Spanne. The sense “pair of horses” is probably from Old English ġespan, ġespann, from Proto-West Germanic. Cognate with Dutch gespan, German Gespann.
• From Middle English spannen, from Old English spannan, from Proto-Germanic *spannaną. Cognate with German spannen, Dutch spannen.
• From Middle English span, from Old English spann, from Proto-Germanic *spann, first and third person singular preterit indicative of Proto-Germanic *spinnaną.