Distances

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Measurements that quantify the space between various points in a given environment
2. Quantitative assessments of the space that separates distinct locations or entities in a physical context
3. The amounts of space measured between two or more locations

Etymology: The most striking twist in this word's past is that its earliest English senses were not about space at all. In Middle English, "distance" could mean a disagreement, a dispute, or even armed conflict, and only alongside those meanings did it come to name the gap between two points. The Latin root behind it, "distantia," carried the same range: difference, diversity, and remoteness all sat together in one word. That Latin noun was built from "distans," meaning "standing apart," the present participle of "distare," which combined the prefix "dis-" (apart, asunder) with "stare" (to stand). The original image is therefore two things standing away from one another, and the sense of spatial separation is the literal one that the word's wider meanings grew out of. The term reached English through Anglo-Norman and Old French forms ("distance," "destance," "distaunce"), which carried the same spread of senses, so the disputes and the measured gaps entered together. Dutch "afstand" and German "Abstand" preserve the same idea of standing off from something, showing that the picture of separation was shared across these related languages.

Synonyms: spaces, gaps, intervals, lengths, ranges

Antonyms: closeness, proximity, nearness, adjacency, shortness