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Wiktionary

extent

EnglishEdit

EtymologyEdit

Borrowed from Anglo-Norman extente, from Old French estente (“valuation of land, stretch of land”), from estendre, extendre (“extend”) (or from Latin extentus), from Latin extendere (See extend.)

PronunciationEdit

  • IPA(key): /ɪksˈtɛnt/
  • Audio (US)
    		(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɛnt
  • Hyphenation: ex‧tent

NounEdit

extent (plural extents)

  1. A range of values or locations.
  2. The space, area, volume, etc., to which something extends.
    The extent of his knowledge of the language is a few scattered words.
    • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, I.xii:
      But when they came where that dead Dragon lay, / Stretcht on the ground in monstrous large extent
    • 1827, Conrad Malte-Brun, Universal Geography, or A Description of All the Parts of the World, on a New Plan, Edinburgh: Adam Black, volume 6, book 101, 285:
      The surface of the Balaton and the surrounding marshes is not less than 24 German square miles, or 384 English square miles; its principal feeder is the Szala, but all the water it receives appears inconsiderable relatively to its superficial extent, and the quantity lost in evaporation.
    • 2014 November 14, Blake Bailey, “'Tennessee Williams,' by John Lahr [print version: Theatrical victory of art over life, International New York Times, 18 November 2014, p. 13]”, in The New York Times‎[1]:
      [S]he [Edwina, mother of Tennessee Williams] was indeed Amanda [Wingfield, character in Williams' play The Glass Menagerie] in the flesh: a doughty chatterbox from Ohio who adopted the manner of a Southern belle and eschewed both drink and sex to the greatest extent possible.
  3. (computing) A contiguous area of storage in a file system.
  4. The valuation of property.
  5. (law) A writ directing the sheriff to seize the property of a debtor, for the recovery of debts of record due to the Crown.

Derived termsEdit

Related termsEdit

TranslationsEdit

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Translations to be checked

AdjectiveEdit

extent

  1. (obsolete) Extended.
    • (Can we find and add a quotation of Edmund Spenser to this entry?)

See alsoEdit

LatinEdit

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