extent

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.)

• IPA^(key): /ɪksˈtɛnt/

• Audio (US)

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• Rhymes: -ɛnt
• Hyphenation: ex‧tent

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.

   • Edmund Spenser

     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:

     [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.

• to an extent
• to some extent

• extend
• extense

extent

1. (obsolete) Extended.
   • (Can we date this quote by Edmund Spenser?)

• scope
• extent on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

extent

1. third-person plural present active subjunctive of extō