span vs traverse

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. 

traverse

verb
  • To lay in a cross direction; to cross. 

  • To use the motions of opposition or counteraction. 

  • To travel across, often under difficult conditions. 

  • To (make a cutting, an incline) across the gradients of a sloped face at safe rate. 

  • To plane in a direction across the grain of the wood. 

  • To deny formally. 

  • To visit all parts of; to explore thoroughly. 

  • To climb or descend a steep hill at a wide angle (relative to the slope). 

  • To rotate a gun around a vertical axis to bear upon a military target. 

  • To act against; to thwart or obstruct. 

  • To pass over and view; to survey carefully. 

adj
  • Lying across; being in a direction across something else. 

adv
  • athwart; across; crosswise 

noun
  • In trench warfare, a defensive trench built to prevent enfilade. 

  • A formal denial of some matter of fact alleged by the opposite party in any stage of the pleadings. The technical words introducing a traverse are absque hoc ("without this", i.e. without what follows). 

  • Something that thwarts or obstructs. 

  • The zigzag course or courses made by a ship in passing from one place to another; a compound course. 

  • A gallery or loft of communication from side to side of a church or other large building. 

  • A route used in mountaineering, specifically rock climbing, in which the descent occurs by a different route than the ascent. 

  • A series of points, with angles and distances measured between, traveled around a subject, usually for use as "control" i.e. angular reference system for later surveying work. 

  • A line lying across a figure or other lines; a transversal. 

  • A traverse board. 

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