Etimology
From Middle English rengen, from Old French rengier (“to range, to rank, to order,”), from the noun renc, reng, ranc, rang (“a rank, row”), from Frankish *hring, from Proto-Germanic *hringaz (“ring, circle, curve”).
noun
range (plural ranges)
A line or series of mountains, buildings, etc.
A fireplace; a fire or other cooking apparatus; now specifically, a large cooking stove with many hotplates.
Selection, array.
An area for practicing shooting at targets.
An area for military training or equipment testing.
The distance from a person or sensor to an object, target, emanation, or event.
The maximum distance or reach of capability (of a weapon, radio, detector, etc.).
The distance a vehicle (e.g., a car, bicycle, lorry, or aircraft) can travel without refueling.
An area of open, often unfenced, grazing land.
The extent or space taken in by anything excursive; compass or extent of excursion; reach; scope.
(mathematics) The set of values (points) which a function can obtain.
(statistics) The length of the smallest interval which contains all the data in a sample; the difference between the largest and smallest observations in the sample.
(sports, baseball) The defensive area that a player can cover.
(music) The scale of all the tones a voice or an instrument can produce.
(ecology) The geographical area or zone where a species is normally naturally found.
(programming) A sequential list of values specified by an iterator.
An aggregate of individuals in one rank or degree; an order; a class.
(obsolete) The step of a ladder; a rung.
(obsolete, UK, dialect) A bolting sieve to sift meal.
A wandering or roving; a going to and fro; an excursion; a ramble; an expedition.
(US, historical) In the public land system, a row or line of townships lying between two succession meridian lines six miles apart.
The variety of roles that an actor can play in a satisfactory way.
Examples
Therein an hundred raunges weren pight, / And hundred fournaces all burning bright; / By euery fournace many feendes did byde, / Deformed creatures, horrible in ſight, / And euery feend his buſie paines applyde, / To melt the golden metall, ready to be tryde.
There was juſt ſuch another Innocent as this, in my Fathers Family : He did the Courſe Work in the Kitchin, and was bid at his firſt Coming to take off the Range, and let down the Cynders before he went to Bed.
We sell a wide range of cars.
But through the oligopoly, charcoal fuel proliferated throughout London's trades and industries. By the 1200s, brewers and bakers, tilemakers, glassblowers, pottery producers, and a range of other craftsmen all became hour-to-hour consumers of charcoal.
Hidden behind thickets of acronyms and gorse bushes of detail, a new great game is under way across the globe. Some call it geoeconomics, but it's geopolitics too. The current power play consists of an extraordinary range of countries simultaneously sitting down to negotiate big free trade and investment agreements.
Synonyms: base, training area, training ground
Synonyms: distance, radius
We could see the ship at a range of five miles.
One can use the speed of sound to estimate the range of a lightning flash.
This missile's range is 500 kilometres.
This aircraft's range is 15 000 kilometres.
There is a young cowboy, he lives on the range / His horse and his cattle are his only companions
As to acquir’d habits and abilities in Learning, his Writings having given the World ſufficient account of them, there remains onely to obſerve, that the range and compaſs of his knowledge fill’d the whole Circle of the Arts, and reach’d thoſe ſeverals which ſingle do exact an entire man unto themſelves, and full age.
For we may further obſerve that men of the greateſt abilities are moſt fired with ambition : and that, on the contrary, mean and narrow minds are the leaſt actuated by it ; whether it be that a man’s ſenſe of his own incapacities makes him deſpair of coming at fame, or that he has not enough range of thought to look out for any good which does not more immediately relate to his intereſt or convenience, or that Providence, in the very frame of his ſoul, would not ſubject him to ſuch a paſſion as would be uſeleſs to the world, and a torment to himſelf.
Far as Creation’s ample range extends, / The ſcale of Senſual, Mental pow’rs aſcends : / Mark how it mounts, to Man’s imperial race, / From the green myriads in the peopled graſs !
Antonym: domain
Jones has good range for a big man.
Synonym: compass
std::for_each calls the given function on each value in the input range.
The next Range of Beings above him are the pure and immaterial Intelligences , the next below him is the sensible Nature.
the first range of that ladder
He may take a range all the world over.
By playing in comedies as well as in dramas he has proved his range as an actor.
By playing in comedies as well as in dramas he has proved his acting range.
Related words
hyponyms
artillery range
grenade range
live-fire range
missile range
rocket range
tank range
holonyms
(values a function can obtain): codomain
coordinate terms
(firing range): shooting gallery
(radius): azimuth, elevation, inclination
(cooking stove): oven
verb
range (third-person singular simple present ranges, present participle ranging, simple past and past participle ranged)
(intransitive) To travel over (an area, etc); to roam, wander. [from 15th c.]
(transitive) To rove over or through.
(obsolete, intransitive) To exercise the power of something over something else; to cause to submit to, over. [16th–19th c.]
(transitive) To bring (something) into a specified position or relationship (especially, of opposition) with something else. [from 16th c.]
(intransitive) Of a variable, to be able to take any of the values in a specified range.
(transitive) To classify.
(intransitive) To form a line or a row.
(intransitive) To be placed in order; to be ranked; to admit of arrangement or classification; to rank.
(transitive) To set in a row, or in rows; to place in a regular line or lines, or in ranks; to dispose in the proper order.
(transitive) To place among others in a line, row, or order, as in the ranks of an army; usually, reflexively and figuratively, to espouse a cause, to join a party, etc.
(biology) To be native to, or live in, a certain district or region.
(military, of artillery) To determine the range to a target.
To sail or pass in a direction parallel to or near.
(baseball) Of a player, to travel a significant distance for a defensive play.
For more quotations using this term, see Citations:range.
Examples
to range the fields
Teach him to range the ditch, and force the brake.
The soule is variable in all manner of formes, and rangeth to her selfe, and to her estate, whatsoever it be, the senses of the body, and all other accidents.
At last we gained such an offing, that the two pilots were needed no longer. The stout sail-boat that had accompanied us began ranging alongside.
In ranging herself as a partisan on the side of Major Pallaby Mrs. Hoopington had been largely influenced by the fact that she had made up her mind to marry him at an early date.
The variable x ranges over all real values from 0 to 10.
In the past two years, NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope has located nearly 3,000 exoplanet candidates ranging from sub-Earth-sized minions to gas giants that dwarf our own Jupiter. Their densities range from that of styrofoam to iron.
The 2025 timetable would feature two trains per hour, alternately routed via Kirkcaldy and Dunfermline , with journey times ranging between 65 and 81 minutes.
to range plants and animals in genera and species
The coins are ranged into nine classes.
All requirements could be ranged into the classes.
The front of a house ranges with the street.
The street-lamps burn amid the baleful glooms, / Amidst the soundless solitudes immense / Of ranged mansions dark and still as tombs.
And range with humble livers in content.
Maccabeus ranged his army by hands.
Were this dependence of the body and mind more studied, and its effects collected and ranged into proper order; no doubt, we would be able to form a better judgment of it, and see further into the good purposes to which it serves;
It would be absurd in me to range myself on the side of the Duke of Bedford and the corresponding society.
The peba ranges from Texas to Paraguay.
to range the coast
Willie, playing in left-center, raced toward a ball no human had any business getting a glove to. Mays ranged to his left, searching, digging in, pouring on the speed, as the crowd screamed its anticipation of a triple.