spanned
- 1Simple past and past participle of span.
The stone arch spanned the gorge for more than a century.
His career has spanned five decades and three continents.
Note
A regular past form with the final n doubled before -ed, serving as both simple past and participle. Most uses are transitive and take a direct object: an arch spanned a gorge, a career spanned decades. In mathematics it often follows a noun as a participle, as in the space spanned by these vectors, meaning the whole space their linear combinations generate. The older sense of hobbling a horse takes the same form.
The plane spanned by these two vectors contains the origin.
Together the three columns spanned all of three-dimensional space.
spanned is a form of span
span, verb: To extend through or continue across a particular period of time. Full entry
- Spelling
- span → spanned: double the n, add -ed
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /d/.
Use it in a sentence
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