different between spread vs compass

English

Etymology

From Middle English spreden, from Old English spr?dan (“to spread, expand”), from Proto-Germanic *spraidijan? (“to spread”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)per- (“to strew, sow, sprinkle”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian spreede (“to spread”), West Frisian spriede (“to spread”), North Frisian spriedjen (“to spread”), Dutch spreiden (“to spread”), Low German spreden (“to spread”), German spreiten (“to spread, spread out”), Norwegian spre, spreie (“to spread, disseminate”), Swedish sprida (“to spread”), Latin spern?, sparg?, Ancient Greek ?????? (speír?), Persian ?????? (sepordan, “to deposit”), English spurn.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /sp??d/
• Rhymes: -?d

Verb

spread (third-person singular simple present spreads, present participle spreading, simple past and past participle spread)

1. (transitive) To stretch out, open out (a material etc.) so that it more fully covers a given area of space. [from 13th c.]

2. (transitive) To extend (individual rays, limbs etc.); to stretch out in varying or opposing directions. [from 13th c.]

3. (transitive) To disperse, to scatter or distribute over a given area. [from 13th c.]

4. (intransitive) To proliferate; to become more widely present, to be disseminated. [from 13th c.]
5. (transitive) To disseminate; to cause to proliferate, to make (something) widely known or present. [from 14th c.]

6. (intransitive) To take up a larger area or space; to expand, be extended. [from 14th c.]

7. (transitive) To smear, to distribute in a thin layer. [from 16th c.]

8. (transitive) To cover (something) with a thin layer of some substance, as of butter. [from 16th c.]

9. To prepare; to set and furnish with provisions.

   to spread a table

   • ?, Alfred Tennyson, The Marriage of Geraint

     Boiled the flesh, and spread the board.

10. (intransitive, slang) To open one’s legs, especially for sexual favours. [from 20th c.]
    • 1984, Martin Amis, Money:

      This often sounds like the rap of a demented DJ: the way she moves has got to be good news, can't get loose till I feel the juice— suck and spread, bitch, yeah bounce for me baby.

    • 1991, Tori Amos, Me and a Gun:

      Yes I wore a slinky red thing. Does that mean I should spread for you, your friends, your father, Mr Ed?

    • 2003, Outkast, "Spread" (from the album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below):

      I don't want to move too fast, but / Can't resist your sexy ass / Just spread, spread for me; / (I can't, I can't wait to get you home)

Synonyms

• disseminate
• circulate
• propagate
• diffuse
• put about

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

spread (countable and uncountable, plural spreads)

1. The act of spreading.
2. Something that has been spread.
3. (cartomancy) A layout, pattern or design of cards arranged for a reading.
4. An expanse of land.
   • November 29, 1712, Andrew Freeport, a letter to The Spectator

     I have got a fine spread of improvable lands.

5. A large tract of land used to raise livestock; a cattle ranch.
   • 2005, Brokeback Mountain (film), 00:11:50:

     - Can’t wait till I get my own spread and won’t have to put up with Joe Aguirre’s crap no more.
     - I’m savin’ for a place myself.

6. A piece of material used as a cover (such as a bedspread).
   • 1975, Douglas Matthews, ?Suzanne Wymelenberg, ?Susan Cheever Cowley, Secondhand is Better (page 166)

     Linen shawls and spreads show up in secondhand clothing stores like those in the row on St. Marks Place in New York City.

7. A large meal, especially one laid out on a table.
8. (bread, etc.) Any form of food designed to be spread, such as butters or jams.
9. (prison slang, uncountable) Food improvised by inmates from various ingredients to relieve the tedium of prison food.

   Synonym: swole

10. An item in a newspaper or magazine that occupies more than one column or page.
11. Two facing pages in a book, newspaper etc.
12. A numerical difference.
13. (business, economics) The difference between the wholesale and retail prices.
14. (trading, economics, finance) The difference between the price of a futures month and the price of another month of the same commodity.
15. (trading, finance) The purchase of a futures contract of one delivery month against the sale of another futures delivery month of the same commodity.
16. (trading, finance) The purchase of one delivery month of one commodity against the sale of that same delivery month of a different commodity.
17. (trading) An arbitrage transaction of the same commodity in two markets, executed to take advantage of a profit from price discrepancies.
18. (trading) The difference between bidding and asking price.
19. (finance) The difference between the prices of two similar items.
20. (geometry) An unlimited expanse of discontinuous points.
21. The surface in proportion to the depth of a cut gemstone.

Synonyms

• straddle

Translations

Further reading

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

Anagrams

• Padres, Persad, drapes, dreaps, padres, parsed, rasped, repads, spader, spared

Italian

Etymology

English spread

Noun

spread m (invariable)

1. (trading, finance) The difference between returns or between quotations of multiple securities or of the same security over the course of a day.
2. A contract awarding which offers the buyer the widest range of bargaining possibilities.

Portuguese

Etymology

Borrowed from English spread.

Noun

spread m (plural spreads)

1. (business, economics) spread (the difference between the wholesale and retail prices)
2. (finance, economics) difference between the interest rate a bank charges to a client and the interest rate it pays

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: k?m?p?s, IPA^(key): /?k?m.p?s/
• Rhymes: -?mp?s

Etymology 1

From Middle English compas (“a circle, circuit, limit, form, a mathematical instrument”), from Old French compas, from Medieval Latin compassus (“a circle, a circuit”), from Latin com- (“together”) + passus (“a pace, step, later a pass, way, route”); see pass, pace.

Noun

compass (plural compasses)

1. A magnetic or electronic device used to determine the cardinal directions (usually magnetic or true north).
   • 1689/1690, John Locke, On improvement of understanding

     He that [...] first discovered the use of the compass [...] did more for the propagation of knowledge [...] than those who built workhouses.

   • 1890, Wilhelm Westhofen, The Forth Bridge

     a glance at his compass would have shown him that a northerly course instead of an easterly could not be right

2. A pair of compasses (a device used to draw an arc or circle).
   • 1701, Jonathan Swift, A Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions between the Nobles and the Commons in Athens and Rome, Chapter 5

     to fix one foot of their compass wherever they please

3. (music) The range of notes of a musical instrument or voice.
4. (obsolete) A space within limits; an area.
   • 1763, M. Le Page Du Pratz, History of Louisiana (PG), page 47:

     In going up the Missisippi [sic], we meet with nothing remarkable before we come to the Detour aux Anglois, the English Reach: in that part the river takes a large compass.

   • 1711, Joseph Addison, The Spectator

     Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.

   • 1913, D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, chapter 14

     Clara thought she had never seen him look so small and mean. He was as if trying to get himself into the smallest possible compass.
5. (obsolete) An enclosing limit; a boundary, a circumference.
6. Moderate bounds, limits of truth; moderation; due limits; used with within.
   • c. 1610, John Davies, Historical Tracts

     In two hundred years before (I speak within compass), no such commission had been executed.

7. (archaic) scope.
   • 1814, William Wordsworth, The Excursion Book 8

     the compass of his argument

   • 1748, David Hume, Enquiries concerning the human understanding and concerning the principles of moral, Oxford University Press (1973), section 8:

     There is a truth and falsehood in all propositions on this subject, and a truth and falsehood, which lie not beyond the compass of human understanding.

   • 1844, Edgar Allan Poe, Marginalia

     How very commonly we hear it remarked that such and such thoughts are beyond the compass of words! I do not believe that any thought, properly so called, is out of the reach of language.

8. (obsolete) A passing round; circuit; circuitous course.
   • 1611, King James Version, 2 Kings iii. 9

     They fetched a compass of seven days' journey.

Synonyms

• (magnetic direction finder): magnetic compass
• (device used to draw circular curves): pair of compasses

Hyponyms

• (pair of compasses): beam compass

Derived terms

Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English compassen (“to go around, make a circuit, draw a circle, contrive, intend”), from Old French compasser; from the noun; see compass as a noun.

Verb

compass (third-person singular simple present compasses, present participle compassing, simple past and past participle compassed)

1. To surround; to encircle; to environ; to stretch round.
   • 1610, The Tempest, by William Shakespeare, act 5 scene 1

     Now all the blessings

     Of a glad father compass thee about!

   • And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.
2. To go about or round entirely; to traverse.
3. (dated) To accomplish; to reach; to achieve; to obtain.
   • 1763, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emilius; or, an essay on education, translated by M. Nugent, page 117:

     [...] they never find ways sufficient to compass that end.

   • 1816, Catholicon: or, the Christian Philosopher, volume 3, from July to December 1816, page 56:

     [...] to settle the end of our action or disputation; and then to take fit and effectual means to compass that end.

   • 1921 November 23, The New Republic, volume 28, number 364, page 2:

     The immediate problem is how to compass that end: by the seizure of territory or by the cultivation of the goodwill of the people whose business she seeks.

4. (dated) To plot; to scheme (against someone).
   • 1600, The Arraignment and Judgement of Captain Thomas Lee, published in 1809, by R. Bagshaw, in Cobbett's Complete Collection of State Trials, volume 1, page 1403–04:

     That he plotted and compassed to raise Sedition and Rebellion [...]

   • 1794 November 1, Speech of Mr. Erskine in Behalf of Hardy, published in 1884, by Chauncey Allen Goodrich, in Select British Eloquence, page 719:

     But it went beyond it by the loose construction of compassing to depose the King, [...]

   • 1915, The Wireless Age, volume 2, page 580:

     The Bavarian felt a mad wave of desire for her sweep over him. What scheme wouldn't he compass to mould that girl to his wishes.

Synonyms

• (surround): encircle, environ, surround
• (go about or around entirely): cover, traverse
• (accomplish): accomplish, achieve, attain, gain, get to, reach
• (plot (against someone)): conspire, plot, scheme

Translations

Adverb

compass (comparative more compass, superlative most compass)

1. (obsolete) In a circuit; round about.
   • 1658, Thomas Browne, Urne-Burial,^[1] Penguin (2005), ?ISBN, page 9:

     Near the same plot of ground, for about six yards compasse were digged up coals and incinerated substances, […]

References

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

Middle English

Noun

compass

1. Alternative form of compas