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EXPANSE
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A wide scope
Example:
the sweep of the plains
Synonyms:
expanse; sweep
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("expanse" is a kind of...):
ambit; compass; orbit; range; reach; scope (an area in which something acts or operates or has power or control:)
Sense 2
Meaning:
The extent of a 2-dimensional surface enclosed within a boundary
Example:
it was about 500 square feet in area
Synonyms:
area; expanse; surface area
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("expanse" is a kind of...):
extent (the distance or area or volume over which something extends)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "expanse"):
acreage; land area (an area of ground used for some particular purpose (such as building or farming))
footprint (the area taken up by some object)
erasure (a surface area where something has been erased)
blank space; place; space (a blank area)
space (one of the areas between or below or above the lines of a musical staff)
balk; baulk (the area on a billiard table behind the balkline)
plane section; section ((geometry) the area created by a plane cutting through a solid)
Sense 3
Meaning:
A wide and open space or area as of surface or land or sky
Classified under:
Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)
Hypernyms ("expanse" is a kind of...):
space (an empty area (usually bounded in some way between things))
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "expanse"):
sheet (any broad thin expanse or surface)
stretch (a large and unbroken expanse or distance)
Context examples:
The New Horizons team has discovered a chain of exotic snowcapped mountains stretching across the dark expanse on Pluto informally named Cthulhu Regio.
(Methane Snow on Pluto’s Peaks, NASA)
And this strange vessel, with its terrible men, pressed under by wind and sea and ever leaping up and out, was heading away into the south-west, into the great and lonely Pacific expanse.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
Ceres' uppermost surface is rich in hydrogen, with higher concentrations at mid-to-high latitudes — consistent with broad expanses of water ice.
(Where is the Ice on Ceres?, NASA)
Kalahari, the name conjures an arid, almost lifeless expanse, its red, iron oxide sands stretching to the horizon and beyond.
(Sleeping sands of the Kalahari awaken after more than 10,000 years, NSF)
The ocean may appear to our eye as a vast, featureless expanse, but the animals that live in it know how to read subtle cues and follow them to where their food is concentrated.
(Blue sharks use ocean eddies as fast-tracks to food, National Science Foundation)
My world had for some years been in Lowood: my experience had been of its rules and systems; now I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
The whole vast plain of Gascony and of Languedoc is an arid and profitless expanse in winter save where the swift-flowing Adour and her snow-fed tributaries, the Louts, the Oloron and the Pau, run down to the sea of Biscay.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The colleges are ancient and picturesque; the streets are almost magnificent; and the lovely Isis, which flows beside it through meadows of exquisite verdure, is spread forth into a placid expanse of waters, which reflects its majestic assemblage of towers, and spires, and domes, embosomed among aged trees.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
The lander touched down Monday, Nov. 26, near Mars' equator on the western side of a flat, smooth expanse of lava called Elysium Planitia, with a signal affirming a completed landing sequence at 11:52:59 a.m. PST (2:52:59 p.m. EST).
(NASA InSight Lander Arrives on Martian Surface, NASA)
The soft moonlight soothed, and the wide expanse without gave a sense of freedom which refreshed me.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
