Word.ws English Dictionary

open the range

open the range verb: to draw oneself or one's vehicles (warships, tanks, aircraft, etc.) out of range of the enemy's fire.

Verb

open the range (third-person singular simple present opens the range, present participle opening the range, simple past and past participle opened the range)

  1. To draw oneself or one's vehicles (warships, tanks, aircraft, etc.) out of range of the enemy's fire.
    • Even after receiving the order to withdraw, the battle-cruiser squadron took several more hits before they managed to open the range.
    • In the confusion, Johnston manages another about-face and heads away to open the range, with its torpedoes spent.2019 February 27, Drachinifel, 18:40 from the start, in The Battle of Samar - Odds? What are those?, archived from the original on 03 Nov 2022

Antonyms of open the range

Forms of open the range

third-person singular presentopens the range
present participleopening the range
past participleopened the range
pastopened the range

Questions about open the range

What does open the range mean?
Open the range means to draw oneself or one's vehicles (warships, tanks, aircraft, etc.) out of range of the enemy's fire.
What part of speech is open the range?
Open the range is a verb.
What is the past tense of open the range?
The past tense of open the range is opened the range.

Words near open the range in the dictionary

  1. open the batting
  2. open the door
  3. open the face
  4. open the floodgates
  5. open the kimono
  6. open the range
  7. open the schools
  8. open the way
  9. open time
  10. open times
  11. open tuning

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: open the range (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “open the range.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/open_the_range. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.