Stretches

How to spell stretches

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce stretches

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does stretches mean?

1. verbExtends in length, area, or duration, or draws the body out to its full length.
2. nounContinuous areas of land, periods of time, or sections of road, considered as separate spans.

Stretches in a sentence

• verb

  The new motorway stretches all the way to the coast.

• noun

  Long stretches of the railway were closed for repairs.

• verb

  She stretches her arms above her head before the morning run.

• noun

  There were quiet stretches during the meeting when nobody spoke.

Where does stretches come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English verb streccan, which meant 'to extend, to spread out, or to reach forward'. That verb belonged to a family of West Germanic words, sharing roots with the Dutch strekken and the German strecken, all carrying the idea of pulling something to its full length. The core sense of physically reaching or drawing something out has stayed remarkably stable over more than a thousand years. The noun use, meaning a continuous span of land, time, or road, developed naturally from the verb: a 'stretch' is simply an unbroken expanse that has been drawn out. The spelling keeps the awkward 'tch' cluster of the base word and then adds '-es' because English requires that ending after a 'ch' sound, which is the small trap writers sometimes fumble.

How the word is built

• stretch (to extend, from Old English streccan)
• -es (third-person singular verb / plural noun ending)