Word.ws English Dictionary

span

UK/spæn/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/span/

span noun: 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. Also the simple past of spin.

Noun

span (plural spans)

  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.
    • The truth is that the charm of her body made up for her other faults: she measured less than 7 spans¹ from her feet to the top of her head, and her back, which weighed somewhat heavily on her, forced her to look down at the ground more than she would have wished. [...] 1. A span is approximately...Part 1 published in 1605, Part 2 in 1615, translated in 2003, Miguel de Cervantes and translated by Edith Grossman, Don Quixote, page 109
  3. (broadly) A small space or a brief portion of time.
    • He has a short attention span and gets bored within minutes.
    • "Why in ten thousand years scarce will the rain and storms lessen a mountain top by a span in thickness?"1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC
  4. A portion of something by length; a subsequence.
    • For example, in OpenOffice.org or Microsoft Word, each span of text can have a style that defines key characteristics about the text: • What font it uses • Whether it's normal, bolded, italicized, […]2004, Robert Harris, Robert Warner, The Definitive Guide to SWT and JFace, page 759
  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.
    • The force of the explosion demolished one pair of piers and two spans of the bridge crashed down into the river on top of the barges.1961 January, “Talking of Trains: The Severn Bridge disaster”, in Trains Illustrated, page 5
  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. (Canada, US, collective) A pair of horses or other animals driven or sold together; usually, such a pair of horses usually being similar in color, form, and action.
    • A span of water buffalo, terrified out of their usual lethargy by sight of the plane, stampeded, pursued by a swearing and scarcely less terrified Hindu farmer.2022, Lester Bernard Dent, The Thousand-Headed Man: A Doc Savage Adventure, DigiCat
    • A span of goats harnessed to a cart is second only to ponies, in a child's estimation; therefore, the beginning of this lesson may well be a span of goats thus employed.2016, Anna Botsford Comstock, Handbook of Nature Study, Ravenio Books
  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.
    • We use the term span (also called depth, or dependence depth) to refer to the number of parallel steps assuming an unbounded number of processors.2017, Ananya Kumar, Guy E. Blelloch, Robert Harper, “Parallel Functional Arrays”, in ACM SIGPLAN Notices, →DOI
  11. wingspan of a plane or bird

Verb

span (third-person singular simple present spans, present participle spanning, simple past and past participle spanned)

  1. (transitive) To extend across (a gap or space between two sides).
    • The suspension bridge spanned the canyon.
    • The rivers were spanned by arches of solid masonry.1855–1858, William H[ickling] Prescott, History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain, volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Boston, Mass.: Phillips, Sampson, and Company, →OCLC
  2. (transitive) To cover or extend over (an area or distance).
    • The parking lot spans three acres.
    • The forest spans the entire valley.
  3. (transitive) To extend through (a period of time).
    • The novel spans three centuries.
    • His career spanned five decades.
  4. (transitive) To measure by the span of the hand with the fingers extended, or with the fingers encompassing the object.
    • to span a space or distance; to span a cylinder
    • Mine hand alſo hath laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand hath ſpanned the heauens: when I call vnto them, they ſtand vp together.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Isaiah 48:13, column 2
  5. To generate an entire space by means of linear combinations.
  6. (US, dated, intransitive) To be matched, as horses.
  7. (transitive) To fetter, as a horse; to hobble.
    • We spanned the dogs high up a corrie to the south of the ridge […]1972, Mountain, numbers 20-24, page 22

Proper noun (1) capitalized: SPAN

SPAN

  1. (abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of Suicide Prevention Advocacy Network.
  2. (abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of Switched Port Analyzer, a Cisco technology.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Span

Span (plural Spans)

  1. A surname.

Also used as

span is also the simple past of spin.

span meaning in Tamil, Bengali, Telugu and Nepali

span in Tamil

Any of various units of length approximating the full width of an open hand
சாண் cāṇ
small space or a brief portion of time
இடைவெளி iṭaiveḷi
to extend through the distance between or across
நீள் nīḷ, நீடு nīṭu

span in Bengali

স্প্যান করতে, স্প্যান করা

span in Telugu

Any of various units of length approximating the full width of an open hand
జాన jāna

span in Nepali

स्प्यान गर्न
More languagesFewer languages
span in Tagalog
damak, sandamak
span in Arabic
شِبْر šibr
span in Persian
وجب vajab, بدست badast

Examples of span in a sentence

  • Life's but a span; I'll every inch enjoy.1699, George Farquhar, The Constant Couple:
  • The unsilent present is a time of evaporating attention spans,2007, John Zerzan, Silence:
  • This was an action for a breach of warranty upon the sale of a span of horses.1872, Marcus D. Hanover, A Practical Treatise on the Law of Horses, Embracing the Law of Bargain, Sale, and Warranty of Horses and Other...
  • When good oxen are worth 80 or 85 dollars a yoke, a span of horses at the same comparative rate of value will cost from $180 to $200.1837 November 11, Franklin Farmer, volumes 1-2, F.D. Pettit, page 82:

All 40 example sentences with span

Forms of span

Noun
pluralspans
Verb
third-person singular presentspans
present participlespanning
past participlespanned
pastspanned
alternative commonspun
Proper noun
pluralSpans

Past tense of span: spanned

Plural of span: spans

Origin of 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.

From Middle English spannen, from Old English spannan, from Proto-Germanic *spannaną (“to stretch, span”). 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 (“to spin”).

Words formed from span

Phrases with span

Words that rhyme with span

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about span

What does span mean?
Span means 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.
What is span in Tamil?
Span in Tamil is சாண் (cāṇ), இடைவெளி (iṭaiveḷi), நீள் (nīḷ). See Span meaning in Tamil.
How do you use span in a sentence?
Life's but a span; I'll every inch enjoy.
What part of speech is span?
Span can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce span?
Span is pronounced /spæn/ (UK).
What is the plural of span?
The plural of span is spans.

Words near span in the dictionary

  1. spamvertizements
  2. spamvertizes
  3. spamvertizing
  4. spamwich
  5. spamwiches
  6. span
  7. span block
  8. span blocks
  9. span counter
  10. span iron
  11. span irons

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: span (page history and authors); SPAN (page history and authors); Span (page history and authors); span (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); span (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-span.ogg.

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