Spanning

How to spell spanning

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce spanning

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does spanning mean?

1. verbExtending across or covering a distance, period, or range from one side or point to another.

Spanning in a sentence

• The new bridge spanning the river opened to traffic last month.

• Her career spanning four decades was celebrated at the retirement dinner.

Where does spanning come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word 'span' comes from Old English 'spann', meaning the distance between the tip of the thumb and the tip of the little finger when the hand is stretched out, a handy unit of measurement in the medieval world. It belongs to a wider Germanic family, related to Old High German 'spanna' and to the verb sense of stretching or fastening, and it is a cousin of the word 'span' used for harnessed animals stretched side by side. From the literal hand-width measure the meaning broadened to any reach or extent across a gap, which is why a bridge 'spans' a river. The present participle 'spanning' is formed by adding -ing, and because 'span' ends in a single vowel followed by a single consonant in a stressed syllable, that final n doubles before the suffix; this doubling rule is the main thing to remember, since the tempting but wrong 'spaning' looks plausible to the eye.

How the word is built

• span (to stretch/reach across)
• -n- (doubled consonant)
• -ing (present participle)