span

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. (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?"”

   “Yet not to Earth's contracted Span, Thy Goodneſs let me bound; […]”

   “Life's but a span; I'll every inch enjoy.”

   “The unsilent present is a time of evaporating attention spans,”

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, […]”

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.”

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)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.

    “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.”

11. wingspan of a plane or bird

verb

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.”

   “Completed in 1823, Gaunless Bridge was designed by George Stephenson to span the River Gaunless in West Auckland, forming part of a line serving Witton Park Colliery.”

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)(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.”

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 […]”

8. (dated, form-of, past, uncommon)simple past of spin

   “But when Adam delued, and Eue ſpan, VVho was then a Gentleman?”

   “So they went in to where Gudruda sat spinning in the hall, singing as she span.”

   “Five spectators remained in critical condition on Monday, a day after they were injured when a giant pick-up truck span out of control during a stunt show in a Dutch town, killing three people, local officials said.”

name

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