distance vs span

distance

verb
  • To leave at a distance; to outpace, leave behind. 

  • To lose interest in a specific issue. 

  • To move away (from) someone or something. 

noun
  • Remoteness of place; a remote place. 

  • The space measured back from the winning-post which a racehorse running in a heat must reach when the winner has covered the whole course, in order to run in the final heat. 

  • A withholding of intimacy; alienation; variance. 

  • Length or interval of time. 

  • The remoteness or reserve which respect requires; hence, respect; ceremoniousness. 

  • A space marked out in the last part of a racecourse. 

  • The amount of space between two points, usually geographical points, usually (but not necessarily) measured along a straight line. 

  • The entire amount of progress to an objective. 

  • Remoteness in succession or relation. 

  • The difference; the subjective measure between two quantities. 

span

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. 

noun
  • The space of all linear combinations of something. 

  • A portion of something by length; a subsequence. 

  • 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. 

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