Expanded

Part of speech: adjective, verb

Pronunciation: /ɛkˈspændɪd/

Definitions

1. Made larger in size, scope, or amount ; developed further by adding detail or explanation
2. Increased or extended in scale or range ; explained more fully with additional information
3. Expanded by becoming bigger or broader ; enriched through detailed elaboration or clarification

Etymology: "Expanded" is the past tense and past participle of "expand", so its story is really the story of the verb. The verb reached English in the 15th century, when it appeared in Middle English around 1422 as "expanden" or "expaunden". It came via Anglo-Norman "espaundre", which itself descends from Latin "expandere", meaning "to spread out". The Latin is built from "ex-", "out, outwards", and "pandere", "to spread", so the core idea of the word is simply spreading something outward. The surprising sibling here is "spawn". The two words are doublets, meaning they came into English by different routes from the same ancient root, so "spawn" and "expand" share a distant ancestry despite their very different modern senses. One is about eggs and young fish multiplying, the other about things growing larger or fuller in detail.

Synonyms: stretched, enlarged, broadened, extended, amplified

Antonyms: contracted, reduced, shrunk, diminished, compressed