course vs span

course

noun
  • A sequence of events. 

  • The path taken by a flow of water; a watercourse. 

  • Any ordered process or sequence of steps. 

  • The drive usually frequented by Europeans at an Indian station. 

  • A path that something or someone moves along. 

  • The lowest square sail in a fully rigged mast, often named according to the mast. 

  • The itinerary of a race. 

  • A programme, a chosen manner of proceeding. 

  • A row of bricks or blocks. 

  • One or more strings on some musical instruments (such as the guitar, lute or vihuela): if multiple, then closely spaced, tuned in unison or octaves and intended to played together. 

  • A learning programme, whether a single class or (UK) a major area of study. 

  • A normal or customary sequence. 

  • The succession of one to another in office or duty; order; turn. 

  • The intended passage of voyage, such as a boat, ship, airplane, spaceship, etc. 

  • In weft knitting, a single row of loops connecting the loops of the preceding and following rows. 

  • The trajectory of a ball, frisbee etc. 

  • A golf course. 

  • A treatment plan. 

  • A stage of a meal. 

  • A racecourse. 

  • The direction of movement of a vessel at any given moment. 

  • A row of material that forms the roofing, waterproofing or flashing system. 

verb
  • To cause to chase after or pursue game. 

  • To run through or over. 

  • To run or flow (especially of liquids and more particularly blood). 

  • To pursue by tracking or estimating the course taken by one's prey; to follow or chase after. 

span

noun
  • A portion of something by length; a subsequence. 

  • The space of all linear combinations of something. 

  • A small space or a brief portion of time. 

  • 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 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. 

  • wingspan of a plane or bird 

  • The length of a cable, wire, rope, chain between two consecutive supports. 

  • Any of various traditional units of length approximating this distance, especially the English handspan of 9 inches forming ⅛ fathom and equivalent to 22.86 cm. 

  • A pair of horses or other animals driven together; usually, such a pair of horses when similar in color, form, and action. 

  • A 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. 

  • The full width of an open hand from the end of the thumb to the end of the little finger used as an informal unit of length. 

verb
  • To extend through the distance between or across. 

  • To extend through (a time period). 

  • To measure by the span of the hand with the fingers extended, or with the fingers encompassing the object. 

  • To generate an entire space by means of linear combinations. 

  • To fetter, as a horse; to hobble. 

How often have the words course and span occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )