expanse
Americannoun
-
expanses
plural
noun
-
an uninterrupted surface of something that spreads or extends, esp over a wide area; stretch
an expanse of water
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expansion or extension
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of expanse
1660–70; < New Latin expānsum, noun use of neuter of Latin expānsus, past participle of expandere to expand
Explanation
An expanse is a huge area you can look at all at once. If you climb to the top of a mountain, suggest that your fellow climbers take time to admire the expanse of trees below. Expanse looks like the word expand. Both come from the Latin word expandere, meaning "to spread out, unfold." But where did expandere come from? Ex- means "out" and pandere means "spread or stretch." So an expanse is something that seems to unfold before your eyes, or to put it another way, something that stretches out as far as the eye can see.
Vocabulary lists containing expanse
The Giver
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The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
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Mr. Popper’s Penguins
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
"It begs the question, why couldn't it have been tested to the north of the Pacific Ocean, where there is an expanse of international waters?" he said.
From Barron's ● Jul. 10, 2026
Julia Dawber's home overlooks an expanse of scenic coastline, and she says as many as nine campervans can park up near the shore at any one time.
From BBC ● Jun. 28, 2026
The rest was wild brush along with the vast expanse of Warnbro Bay and the Indian Ocean.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 16, 2026
Authorities and volunteers continued searching Sunday for a man who vanished on May 25 while hiking through a wooded expanse west of Lake Tahoe.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 31, 2026
Up a slight slope, across an expanse of vacant lots, a modern church, quite large, stood in a lazy pall of white smoke—St. Ignatius, I assumed.
From "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson
Much-needed rain brought some respite Monday to firefighters on their fourth day battling Belgium's worst wildfire in a century, which has scorched vast expanses of nature reserve on the German border.
From Barron's ● Aug. 17, 2026
"What makes this pattern so fascinating is that evolution keeps arriving at similar cooperative solutions in very different groups and across vast expanses of time," says Dorus.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 6, 2026
New Yorkers take part in a snowball fight in Brooklyn's McCarren Park, as a major winter storm sweeps through vast expanses of the United States.
From Barron's ● Jan. 26, 2026
With it, Ellington didn’t just adjust to a technological innovation; he embraced it as a fresh canvas, stretching his musical imagination across unprecedented expanses of time and sound.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 16, 2026
From up there, Tally saw bare stretches among the flowers, expanses of dry, sandy earth.
From "Uglies" by Scott Westerfeld
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
