expanse
Americannoun
-
expanses
plural
noun
-
an uninterrupted surface of something that spreads or extends, esp over a wide area; stretch
an expanse of water
-
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:
They lived across a large expanse of Europe and western and central Asia, and sometimes overlapped with our species, Homo sapiens.
From BBC ● Oct. 15, 2026
Near the upper center of the scene, the Po Valley stands out as a broad expanse of green and brown.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 12, 2026
The 29,000-acre expanse of savannah and woodlands sits on the city’s edge, near two airports, yet it is home to lions, zebras and Maasai giraffes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 27, 2026
Generations ago, the Central Valley was a vast expanse of lush meadows, wetlands and lakes fed by melting Sierra Nevada snow.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 26, 2026
Before I scrambled down, unused rifle on my back, I sought out Rose, spying her and Wab embracing in the dirt expanse between the woods and the road.
From "The Marrow Thieves" by Cherie Dimaline
Elordi, who hails from Brisbane, is a little more hopeful about the future of the climate in the context of the film - pointing to other parts where you can see lush expanses of greenery.
From BBC ● Aug. 27, 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
Once master of vast expanses of northern, central and western Africa, France has played a crucial role in the continent's post‑colonial history, repeatedly intervening militarily since the early 1960s.
From Barron's ● May 10, 2026
Photos shared by the agency on social media showed the snow-lined highway littered with boulders and debris and expanses of it buckled and broken.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 31, 2025
It all looked exactly the same to me—green farms, thick expanses of trees.
From "The Darkest Minds" by Alexandra Bracken
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
