range vs span

range

verb
  • To travel over (an area, etc); to roam, wander. 

  • To bring (something) into a specified position or relationship (especially, of opposition) with something else. 

  • To classify. 

  • Of a variable, to be able to take any of the values in a specified range. 

  • To be native to, or live in, a certain district or region. 

  • To form a line or a row. 

  • To place among others in a line, row, or order, as in the ranks of an army; usually, reflexively and figuratively, to espouse a cause, to join a party, etc. 

  • To sail or pass in a direction parallel to or near. 

  • Of a player, to travel a significant distance for a defensive play. 

  • To rove over or through. 

  • To determine the range to a target. 

  • To set in a row, or in rows; to place in a regular line or lines, or in ranks; to dispose in the proper order. 

  • To be placed in order; to be ranked; to admit of arrangement or classification; to rank. 

noun
  • A fireplace; a fire or other cooking apparatus; now specifically, a large cooking stove with many hotplates. 

  • An area for practicing shooting at targets. 

  • The extent or space taken in by anything excursive; compass or extent of excursion; reach; scope. 

  • An area of open, often unfenced, grazing land. 

  • The scale of all the tones a voice or an instrument can produce. 

  • The distance from a person or sensor to an object, target, emanation, or event. 

  • The length of the smallest interval which contains all the data in a sample; the difference between the largest and smallest observations in the sample. 

  • The geographical area or zone where a species is normally naturally found. 

  • A sequential list of values specified by an iterator. 

  • The maximum distance or reach of capability (of a weapon, radio, detector, etc.). 

  • The set of values (points) which a function can obtain. 

  • An area for military training or equipment testing. 

  • A wandering or roving; a going to and fro; an excursion; a ramble; an expedition. 

  • A line or series of mountains, buildings, etc. 

  • In the public land system, a row or line of townships lying between two succession meridian lines six miles apart. 

  • The distance a vehicle (e.g., a car, bicycle, lorry, or aircraft) can travel without refueling. 

  • Selection, array. 

  • The defensive area that a player can cover. 

  • An aggregate of individuals in one rank or degree; an order; a class. 

  • The variety of roles that an actor can play in a satisfactory way. 

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 range and span occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )