To cause something to change from being concentrated at one point to being distributed across a number of points.
To reduce the authority of a governing body by distributing that authority among several bodies.
To design and construct the contours of a vehicle etc. so as to offer the least resistance to its flow through a fluid.
To simplify or organize a process in order to increase its efficiency.
To modernise.
On a weather chart, a line that is tangent to the flow of the wind.
A line that is tangent to the velocity of flow of a fluid; equivalent to the path of a specific particle in that flow.