distribution
Pluraldistributions
- 1The act of handing something out or spreading it among people or places, or the state of being spread in that way.
The charity oversees the distribution of medical supplies to rural clinics.
Distribution of the new textbooks will begin as soon as the shipment arrives.
UsageUsually the distribution of something to or among people or places: the distribution of supplies to rural clinics.
Similarallocation, dispersal, dissemination, apportionment
Oppositecollection
- 2The process of getting goods from producers to final consumers across a market, including storage, shipping, selling, and advertising.
After the merger, the firm took over distribution for both brands in North America.
Poor distribution kept the product off shelves in smaller towns.
UsageOften used with no article for the business function: poor distribution, handle distribution for a brand, take over distribution.
Note
A trade term much wider than shipping. In marketing, distribution takes in everything between factory and buyer, including warehousing, transport, selling and promotion. A firm can therefore handle distribution for a brand it does not make. Keep it apart from the sales or circulation figure, which counts units rather than describing how they travel.
- 3The way something is spread out or arranged over an area, a range or a group; the pattern in which it occurs.
The architect studied the distribution of windows along the facade.
An uneven distribution of weight made the canoe tip to one side.
UsageOften an even or uneven distribution of something across, along or among a place or group.
Similarspread
Oppositeconcentration
- 4The way income or wealth is apportioned among the members of a population.
Economists debate whether tax policy can meaningfully change the distribution of income.
The country's wealth distribution grew more concentrated over the decade.
UsageUsually the distribution of income or of wealth, or the compounds income distribution and wealth distribution.
Similardivision
Note
Economics uses the word to describe who holds what across a population. Income distribution and wealth distribution are the standard compounds. They are described as skewed, concentrated or unequal, words shared with the probability sense. Economists commonly summarize a distribution with measures such as the Gini coefficient or the share of income held by each fifth of households.
Checked 6 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- The Gini coefficient summarizes income inequality. census.gov
- Income shares by household quintile are used to summarize income distribution. census.gov
- 5The set of relative likelihoods that a variable will take a value within any given interval.
Heights in the population follow a roughly normal distribution.
The distribution of waiting times at the clinic was skewed: most patients were seen quickly, but a few waited for hours.
UsageOften named by its shape: a normal distribution, a skewed distribution; values follow a distribution.
Note
Short for probability distribution, and in statistics the short form is the norm. A distribution is often specified by a density or mass function and summarized by quantities such as mean and variance, when these exist. It may be described by its shape: a bell-shaped one, a skewed one, one with a long tail. Mathematicians also use the word for a construction in differential geometry, an unrelated object that only shares the name.
Checked 6 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Many distributions have a density or mass function, but some, including the Cantor distribution, have neither. arnabc74.github.io
- Mean and variance are common summaries when they exist; some distributions, including the Cauchy distribution, have neither. itl.nist.gov
- 6A set of software components bundled and released together, such as an operating system built around the Linux kernel.
Debian is a long-running distribution maintained by a community of volunteers.
Each distribution bundles the same core system with its own selection of tools and default settings.
UsageUsually with the name of its core system in front: a Linux distribution; often shortened to distro.
Similardistro
Note
Software people clip it to distro, especially in the Linux world. There the word usually follows the name of the system at its core, as in a Linux distribution. A typical one packages a core platform with libraries, utilities and a package manager, tested and released as a whole. Distributions differ in what they add to that core, how they configure and update it, and how long they support it.
- 7Something handed out as a portion or share; an allotment received.
Shareholders received their quarterly distribution in early January.
Her quarterly distribution from the family trust was smaller than she had expected.
UsageHere it is a share you receive, so the plural is common: a distribution from a fund or trust, quarterly distributions.
Similarshare, allotment, allocation, payout, dividend
Note
A concrete, countable use: the thing handed out rather than the handing. Francis Atterbury, preaching before the sons of the clergy in 1709, spoke of 'our charitable distributions', meaning what a charity gives away. The same sense covers a payout to shareholders or a food-bank parcel.
- 8An apportionment of funds or property carried out under legal authority, as in settling an estate or a bankruptcy.
The will called for an equal distribution of the estate among the four heirs.
Creditors received a partial distribution from the bankrupt company's remaining assets.
Similardivision, apportionment
Less common meanings
- 9The total number of units of something sold or delivered to clients or customers.
With a distribution of two million copies, the paper dominated the regional market.
The weekly newsletter now has a distribution of more than eighty thousand copies, most of them mailed to subscribers overseas.
Similarcirculation, sales
- 10The process or result of selling securities, especially placing them with investors who intend to hold them as long-term investments.
The underwriters managed the distribution of the IPO shares among institutional buyers.
A successful distribution leaves most of the issue in the hands of long-term holders rather than short-term traders.
Similarplacement
Note
In the securities trade, distribution is the placing of a large offering with investors, most often a new issue sold by underwriters, though a block of existing shares can be sold the same way. A good distribution places the securities with investors who will hold them, not traders who will quickly resell. Keep it apart from a payout to holders, which belongs to a share handed out.
- 11The way a player's hand is divided among the suits, or the way the cards of one suit are divided among the players.
A 4-4-3-2 distribution is the most common shape for a bridge hand.
South guessed the distribution of the trump suit correctly and took the winning finesse.
UsageWith figures it takes a or no article: a 4-4-3-2 distribution; the declarer had 3-6-2-2 distribution.
Note
Card players describe a hand's shape in figures. A hand of 3-6-2-2 distribution holds three, six, two and two cards across the four suits. The word also covers how a single suit splits among the other hands, and both bidding and play in bridge depend on inferring it correctly.
- 12The resolution or breaking down of a whole into its constituent parts.
- 13A rhetorical technique of dividing a subject into separate cases according to some property and addressing each case in turn.
- 14The process of sorting used type and returning each piece to its proper compartment in the type cases.
- 15The timed sequence of admission, cutoff, release, and compression that controls steam entering and leaving a steam engine's cylinder.
- 16In differential geometry, an assignment of a tangent subspace to each point of a manifold, subject to conditions such as smoothness, used to define integrability and foliations.
Practice
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Origin
Latin distribuere 'to distribute' joins dis- 'apart' and tribuere 'to give' (from tribus); its noun distributio reached English by way of Old French. Within English the word also reads as distribute + -ion.