span

1. 1.

   to cover or extend over an area or time period

   “Rivers traverse the valley floor”

   “The parking lot spans 3 acres”

   “The novel spans three centuries”

   Synonymscrosstraversesweep

   Broadercover

Other forms of span

plural

spans·

past tense or participle

spanned

present participle

spanning

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about span

What does span mean?

span means "the complete duration of something". That is the primary sense; the word has 7 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in span?

span has 1 syllable: span. In IPA it is /ˈspæn/.

What is another word for span?

Close synonyms include couple, pair, twosome, twain, brace. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is span a common word?

span is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with span?

3 words rhyme with span. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.