range

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Extent of perception, knowledge, experience, or ability.
2. n. The area or sphere in which an activity takes place.
3. n. The full extent covered: within the range of possibilities.
4. n. An amount or extent of variation: a wide price range.
5. n. Music The gamut of tones that a voice or instrument is capable of producing. Also called compass.
6. n. The maximum extent or distance limiting operation, action, or effectiveness, as of a projectile, aircraft, radio signal, or sound.
7. n. The maximum distance that can be covered by a vehicle with a specified payload before its fuel supply is exhausted.
8. n. The distance between a projectile weapon and its target.
9. n. A place equipped for practice in shooting at targets.
10. n. Aerospace A testing area at which rockets and missiles are launched and tracked.
11. n. An extensive area of open land on which livestock wander and graze.
12. n. The geographic region in which a plant or animal normally lives or grows.
13. n. The act of wandering or roaming over a large area.
14. n. Mathematics The set of all values a given function may take on.
15. n. Statistics The difference or interval between the smallest and largest values in a frequency distribution.
16. n. A class, rank, or order: The candidate had broad support from the lower ranges of the party.
17. n. An extended group or series, especially a row or chain of mountains.
18. n. One of a series of double-faced bookcases in a library stack room.
19. n. A north-south strip of townships, each six miles square, numbered east and west from a specified meridian in a U.S. public land survey.
20. n. A stove with spaces for cooking a number of things at the same time.
21. v. To arrange or dispose in a particular order, especially in rows or lines.
22. v. To assign to a particular category; classify.
23. v. To align (a gun, for example) with a target.
24. v. To determine the distance of (a target).
25. v. To be capable of reaching (a maximum distance).
26. v. To pass over or through (an area or region).
27. v. To turn (livestock) onto an extensive area of open land for grazing.
28. v. Nautical To uncoil (an anchor cable) on deck so the anchor may descend easily.
29. v. To vary within specified limits: ages that ranged from two to five.
30. v. To extend in a particular direction: a river that ranges to the east.
31. v. To extend or lie in the same direction: "Whatsoever comes athwart his affection ranges evenly with mine” ( Shakespeare).
32. v. To pass over or through an area or region in or as if in exploration.
33. v. To wander freely; roam.
34. v. To live or grow within a particular region.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To make a row or rows of; place in a line or lines; hence, to fix or set in any definite order; dispose with regularity; array: arrange.
2. To rank or class; place or reckon as being of or belonging to some class, category, party, etc.; fix the relative place or standing of; classify; collocate.
3. To rank or reckon; consider; count.
4. To engage; occupy.
5. To pass over or through the line, course, or extent of; go along or about, especially for some definite purpose; rove over or along: as, to range the forest for game or for poachers; to range a river or the coast in a boat.
6. To sift; pass through a range or bolting-sieve.
7. To constitute or be parallel to a line or row; have linear course or direction; be in or form a line: as, a boundary ranging east and west; houses ranging evenly with the street.
8. To be on a level; agree in class or position; have equal rank or place; rank correspondingly.
9. To go in a line or course; hence, to rove freely; pass from point to point; make a course or tour; roam; wander.
10. To move in a definite manner, as for starting game; beat about; of dogs, to run within the proper range.
11. To have course or direction; extend in movement or location; pass; vary; stretch; spread: as, prices range between wide limits; the plant ranges from Canada to Mexico.
12. In gunnery, to have range: said of a missile, and denoting length of range and also direction: as, that shot ranged too far, or too much to the right: rarely, of the gun itself.
13. Synonyms Roam, Rove, etc. See ramble, v.
14. n. A line or row (usually straight or nearly straight); a linear series; a regular sequence; a rank; a chain: used especially of large objects permanently fixed or lying in direct succession to one another, as mountains, trees, buildings, columns, etc.
15. n. Specifically— A line or chain of mountains; a Cordillera: as, to skirt the range; to cross the ranges.
16. n. In United States surveys of public land, one of a series of divisions numbered east or west from the prime meridian of the survey, consisting of townships which are numbered north or south in every division from a base-line. See township.
17. n. In geometry, a series of points lying in one straight line.
18. n. A rank, class, or order; a series of beings or things belonging to the same grade or having like characteristics.
19. n. The extent of any aggregate, congeries, or complex, material or immaterial; array of things or sequences of a specific kind; scope; compass: as, the range of industries in a country; the whole range of events or of history; the range of prices or of operations; the range of one's thoughts or learning.
20. n. Extent of operating force or activity; scope or compass of efficient action; space or distance over or through which energy can be exerted; limit of effect or of capability; extent of reach: as, the range of a gun or a shot; the range of a thermometer or a barometer (the extent of its variation in any period, or of its capacity for marking degrees of change); the range of a singer or of a musical instrument. Range in shooting is the horizontal distance to which a projectile is or may be thrown by a gun or other arm under existing conditions: distinguished from trajectory, or the curvilinear distance traversed by the projectile when the arm is elevated out of a horizontal line. The effective range depends upon the amount or the absence of elevation and the consequent trajectory. (Compare point-blank.) To get the range of a point to be fired at is to ascertain, either by calculation or by experiment, or by both, the degree of elevation for the muzzle of the piece necessary to bring the shot to bear upon it.
21. n. Unobstructed distance or interval from one point or object to another; length of course for free direct ranging through the air, as of a missile or of sight; a right line of aim or of observation, absolute or relative: as, the range is too great for effective firing; the range of vision.
22. n. The act of ranging; a wandering or roving; movement from point to point in space.
23. n. An area or course of ranging, either in space or in time; an expanse for movement or existence; the region, sphere, or space over which any being or thing ranges or is distributed: as, the range of an animal or a plant within geographical limits or during geological time, or of a marine animal in depth; the range of Gothic architecture; the range of a man's influence.
24. n. Specifically— A tract or district of land within which domestic animals in large numbers range for subsistence; an extensive grazing-ground: used on the great plains of the United States for a tract commonly of many square miles, occupied by one or by different proprietors, and distinctively called a cattle-, stock-, or sheep-range. The animals on a range are usually left to take care of themselves during the whole year without shelter, excepting when periodically gathered in a “round-up” for counting and selection, and for branding when the herds of several proprietors run together. In severe winters many are lost by such exposure.
25. n. A course for shooting at marks or targets; a space of ground appropriated or laid out for practice in the use of firearms: distinctively called a rifle-range or shooting-range.
26. n. A fire-grate.
27. n. A cooking-stove built into a fireplace, or sometimes portable but of a similar shape, having a row or rows of openings on the top for carrying on several operations at once. Fixed ranges usually have two ovens, either on each side of the fire-chamber or above it at the back, and in houses supplied with running water a hot-water reservoir or permanent boiler. The origin of the modern cooking-range may be sought in the furnaces of masonry of the ancient Romans, arranged to receive cooking-utensils on the top. Throughout the middle ages only open-chimney fires were used, until in France, in the course of the fourteenth century, built furnaces with openings above for pots began to be added in great kitchens, for convenience in preparing the soups and sauces then in greater favor than before. The range in the modern sense, involving the application of heat conducted by and reflected from iron plates, was first advanced and practically improved by Count Rumford.
28. n. A step of a ladder; a round; a rung.
29. n. Nautical: A large cleat with two arms or branches, bolted in the waist of ships to belay the tacks and sheets to.
30. n. A certain quantity of cable hauled up on deck from the chain-locker, of a length slightly greater than the depth of water, in order that the anchor, when let go, may reach the bottom without being checked.
31. n. In shoemaking, a strip cut from a butt or side of sole-leather.
32. n. A bolting-sieve for meal.
33. n. Synonyms Line, tier, file.
34. n. Sweep, reach.
35. n. In heraldry, arranged in order: said of small bearings set in a row fessewise, or the like. The epithet is not often needed: thus, “six mullets in bend or bendwise” is sufficient without the use of the expression “rangé in bend.”
36. Nautical, to sail parallel to: as, to range the coast.
37. To find the range; determine the range.

Wiktionary

1. n. Line or series of mountains.
2. n. A fireplace; a fire or other cooking apparatus; now specifically, a large cooking stove with many hotplates.
3. n. Selection, array. E.g.: A range of cars.
4. n. An area for practicing shooting at targets.
5. n. An area for military training or equipment testing.
6. n. The distance from a person or sensor to an object, target, emanation, or event.
7. n. Maximum range of capability (of a weapon, radio, detector, fuel supply, etc.).
8. n. An area of open, often unfenced, grazing land.
9. n. mathematics The set of values (points) which a function can obtain.
10. n. 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.
11. n. sports, baseball The defensive area that a player can cover.
12. n. music The scale of all the tones a voice or an instrument can produce.
13. n. ecology The geographical area or zone where a species is normally naturally found.
14. n. programming A sequential list of iterators that are specified by a beginning and ending iterator.
15. v. intransitive (mathematics, computing; followed by over) Of a variable, to be able to take any of the values in a specified range
16. v. transitive to classify
17. v. intransitive To form a line or a row.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. v. 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; to rank.
2. v. To place (as a single individual) among others in a line, row, or order, as in the ranks of an army; -- usually, reflexively and figuratively, (in the sense) to espouse a cause, to join a party, etc.
3. v. obsolete To separate into parts; to sift.
4. v. To dispose in a classified or in systematic order; to arrange regularly.
5. v. To rove over or through.
6. v. To sail or pass in a direction parallel to or near.
7. v. (Biol.) To be native to, or to live in; to frequent.
8. v. To rove at large; to wander without restraint or direction; to roam.
9. v. To have range; to change or differ within limits; to be capable of projecting, or to admit of being projected, especially as to horizontal distance
10. v. To be placed in order; to be ranked; to admit of arrangement or classification; to rank.
11. v. To have a certain direction; to correspond in direction; to be or keep in a corresponding line; to trend or run; -- often followed by with
12. v. (Biol.) To be native to, or live in, a certain district or region.
13. n. A series of things in a line; a row; a rank
14. n. An aggregate of individuals in one rank or degree; an order; a class.
15. n. The step of a ladder; a rung.
16. n. obsolete A kitchen grate.
17. n. An extended cooking apparatus of cast iron, set in brickwork, and affording conveniences for various ways of cooking; also, a kind of cooking stove.
18. n. Obs. or Prov. Eng. A bolting sieve to sift meal.
19. n. A wandering or roving; a going to and fro; an excursion; a ramble; an expedition.
20. n. That which may be ranged over; place or room for excursion; especially, a region of country in which cattle or sheep may wander and pasture.
21. n. Extent or space taken in by anything excursive; compass or extent of excursion; reach; scope; discursive power.
22. n. (Biol.) The region within which a plant or animal naturally lives.
23. n. The horizontal distance to which a shot or other projectile is carried.
24. n. Sometimes, less properly, the trajectory of a shot or projectile.
25. n. A place where shooting, as with cannons or rifles, is practiced.
26. n. In the public land system of the United States, a row or line of townships lying between two successive meridian lines six miles apart.
27. n. (Naut.) See Range of cable, below.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. (mathematics) the set of values of the dependent variable for which a function is defined
2. v. lay out orderly or logically in a line or as if in a line
3. v. have a range; be capable of projecting over a certain distance, as of a gun
4. n. the limit of capability
5. n. a series of hills or mountains
6. n. a kitchen appliance used for cooking food
7. v. range or extend over; occupy a certain area
8. n. the limits within which something can be effective
9. v. assign a rank or rating to
10. n. a place for shooting (firing or driving) projectiles of various kinds
11. n. an area in which something acts or operates or has power or control:
12. n. a variety of different things or activities
13. v. let eat
14. v. change or be different within limits
15. n. a large tract of grassy open land on which livestock can graze
16. v. feed as in a meadow or pasture
17. v. move about aimlessly or without any destination, often in search of food or employment