Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The range, magnitude, or distance over which a thing extends.
  • noun The degree to which a thing extends.
  • noun An extensive space or area.
  • noun In Great Britain, a writ allowing a creditor to seize a debtor's property temporarily.
  • noun The seizure in execution of such a writ.
  • noun Archaic An assessment or valuation, as of land in Britain, especially for taxation.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Extended.
  • To assess; lay on or apportion, as an assessment.
  • To be assessed; be rated for assessment.
  • noun The space or degree to which a thing is or may be extended; length; compass; bulk; size; limit: as, the extent of a line; a great extent of country or of body; the utmost extent of one's ability.
  • noun Communication; distribution; bestowal.
  • noun In law: Valuation; specifically, a census or general valuation put upon lands, for the purpose of regulating the proportion of public subsidies or taxes exigible from them, as well as for ascertaining the amount of the casualties due to the superior.
  • noun A peculiar remedy to recover debts of record due to the crown, differing from an ordinary writ of execution at the suit of a subject, in that under it the body, lands, and goods of a debtor may be all taken at once, in order to compel the payment of the debt.
  • noun Logical extension or breadth.
  • noun A violent attack.
  • noun The length and the breadth (of power, greatness, duty, or the like).

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Space or degree to which a thing is extended; hence, superficies; compass; bulk; size; length
  • noun Degree; measure; proportion.
  • noun A peculiar species of execution upon debts due to the crown, under which the lands and goods of the debtor may be seized to secure payment.
  • noun A process of execution by which the lands and goods of a debtor are valued and delivered to the creditor.
  • adjective obsolete Extended.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A range of values or locations.
  • noun The space, area, volume, etc., to which something extends.
  • noun computing A contiguous area of storage in a file system.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the distance or area or volume over which something extends
  • noun the point or degree to which something extends

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English extente, assessment on land, from Anglo-Norman, from feminine past participle of extendre, to extend, from Latin extendere; see extend.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Anglo-Norman extente, from Old French estente ("valuation of land, stretch of land"), from extendre ("extend"), from Latin extendere (See extend.)

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