Other forms: expanded, expanding, expands
To expand is to grow larger or spread wider. The business expanded, metal expands, expand the range.
In physics, almost everything expands when heated, which is why bridges have expansion joints. In business, expanding means opening in new places or lines. Expand on means to say more about something: expand on that point. Note expansion; expansive, which of a person means talkative and generous; and that expand and explain are unrelated despite both being what somebody asks you to do.
1verbexpandTo grow larger or spread wider.
“The balloon expanded as she blew more air into it.”
synonyms: enlarge, grow
2verbverbTo say more about something.
“He was asked to expand on that and declined.”
expand is a growing larger.
Also accepted in games: enlarge
Latin expandere is ex-, out, plus pandere, to spread. The same pandere gives pass and pace by way of the spread of a stride, so expanding and pacing are distantly the same motion.
Proto-Indo-European
*peth₂-
Latin
expandō — to spread out
Anglo-Norman
espaundre
English, today
expand
Built from
Recorded in Middle English - since 1422 (as expanden, expaunden), from Anglo-Norman espaundre, from Latin expandō (“to spread out”), itself from ex- (“out, outwards”) + pandō (“to spread”). a doublet of spawn.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA