Definitions
1.nounThe space from the thumb to the end of the little finger when extended; nine inches; an eighth of a fathom.
2.noun(by extension) A small space or a brief portion of time."He has a short attention span and gets bored within minutes."
3.nounA portion of something by length; a subsequence.
4.nounThe spread or extent of an arch or between its abutments, or of a beam, girder, truss, roof, bridge, or the like, between supports.
5.nounThe length of a cable, wire, rope, chain between two consecutive supports.
6.nounA 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.
7.nounA pair of horses or other animals driven together; usually, such a pair of horses when similar in color, form, and action.
8.nounThe space of all linear combinations of something.
9.nounThe 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.
10.verbTo extend through the distance between or across."The suspension bridge spanned the canyon."
11.verbTo extend through (a time period)."The novel spans three centuries."
12.verbTo 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"
13.verbTo generate an entire space by means of linear combinations.
14.verbTo be matched, as horses.
15.verbTo fetter, as a horse; to hobble.