distance

• distaunce (obsolete)

From Middle English distance, distaunce, destaunce, from Old French destance, from Latin distantia (“distance, remoteneness, difference”), from distāns, present participle of distō (“I stand apart, I am separate, distant, or different”), from di-, dis- (“apart”) + stō (“I stand”). Compare Dutch afstand (“distance”, literally “off-stand, off-stance”), German Abstand.

• IPA^(key): /ˈdɪs.tɪns/
• (weak vowel merger) IPA^(key): /ˈdɪs.təns/

• Audio (US)

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distance (countable and uncountable, plural distances)

1. (countable) The amount of space between two points, usually geographical points, usually (but not necessarily) measured along a straight line.

   The distance to Petersborough is thirty miles.

   From Moscow, the distance is relatively short to Saint Petersburg, relatively long to Novosibirsk, but even greater to Vladivostok.

   • 1918, W. B. Maxwell, chapter 5, in The Mirror and the Lamp:

     Then everybody once more knelt, and soon the blessing was pronounced. The choir and the clergy trooped out slowly, […], down the nave to the western door. […] At a seemingly immense distance the surpliced group stopped to say the last prayer.

2. Length or interval of time.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Matthew Prior

     ten years' distance between one and the other

   • (Can we date this quote?) John Playfair

     the writings of Euclid at the distance of two thousand years

3. (countable, informal) The difference; the subjective measure between two quantities.

   We're narrowing the distance between the two versions of the bill.  The distance between the lowest and next gear on my bicycle is annoying.

4. Remoteness of place; a remote place.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Washington Irving

     easily managed from a distance

   • (Can we date this quote?) Thomas Campbell

     'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Joseph Addison

     [He] waits at distance till he hears from Cato.

5. Remoteness in succession or relation.

   the distance between a descendant and his ancestor

6. A space marked out in the last part of a racecourse.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Roger L'Estrange

     the horse that ran the whole field out of distance

7. (uncountable, figuratively) The entire amount of progress to an objective.

   He had promised to perform this task, but did not go the distance.

8. (uncountable, figuratively) A withholding of intimacy; alienation; variance.

   The friendship did not survive the row: they kept each other at a distance.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Francis Bacon

     Setting them [factions] at distance, or at least distrust amongst themselves.

   • (Can we date this quote?) John Milton

     On the part of Heaven, / Now alienated, distance and distaste.

   • 1892, Walter Besant, chapter III, in The Ivory Gate: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], OCLC 16832619:

     In former days every tavern of repute kept such a room for its own select circle, a club, or society, of habitués, who met every evening, for a pipe and a cheerful glass. […] Strangers might enter the room, but they were made to feel that they were there on sufferance: they were received with distance and suspicion.

9. The remoteness or reserve which respect requires; hence, respect; ceremoniousness.
   • (Can we date this quote?) John Dryden

     I hope your modesty / Will know what distance to the crown is due.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Francis Atterbury

     'Tis by respect and distance that authority is upheld.

10. The space measured back from the winning-post which a racehorse running in a heat must reach when the winner has covered the whole course, in order to run in the final heat.

• (remoteness): farness

• distant

distance (third-person singular simple present distances, present participle distancing, simple past and past participle distanced)

1. (transitive) To move away (from) someone or something.

   He distanced himself from the comments made by some of his colleagues.

2. (transitive) To leave at a distance; to outpace, leave behind.
   • 1891, Mary Noailles Murfree, In the "Stranger People's" Country, Nebraska 2005, p. 71:

     Then the horse, with muscles strong as steel, distanced the sound.

• outdistance

• distance in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• distance in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• distance at OneLook Dictionary Search

• danciest

From French distance.

• IPA^(key): /distanɡsə/, [d̥iˈsd̥ɑŋsə]

distance c (singular definite distancen, plural indefinite distancer)

1. distance
2. detachment

• “distance” in Den Danske Ordbog

• IPA^(key): /dis.tɑ̃s/
• Rhymes: -ɑ̃s

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distance f (plural distances)

1. distance

distance

1. inflection of distancer:
   1. first-person and third-person singular present indicative
   2. first-person and third-person singular present subjunctive
   3. second-person singular imperative

• “distance” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

distance f (5 declension)

1. distance
2. interval
3. railway division