span

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   the complete duration of something

   the job was finished in the span of an hour

2. 2
   verb

   to cover or extend over an area or time period

   Rivers traverse the valley floor, The parking lot spans 3 acres

3. 3
   noun

   A small space or a brief portion of time.

   He has a short attention span and gets bored within minutes.

4. 4
   noun

   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. 5
   noun

   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. 6
   noun

   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.

7. 7
   verb

   To extend through the distance between or across.

   The suspension bridge spanned the canyon.

8. 8
   verb

   To extend through (a time period).

   The parking lot spans three acres.

Etymology

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.