Other forms: ranging, ranges, ranged
A range is the gap between the smallest and the largest. The lowest price and the highest, and everything between.
It measures spread of every kind: an age range, a temperature range, a price range. From there it grew into the idea of a selection, so a shop's range is everything it stocks, and a singer's range is every note they can reach. Geography uses it for a line of mountains, and shooting for the place you practise. As a verb, to range is to vary between limits, or to wander over a wide area.
1nounrangeThe difference between the lowest and highest values.
“The range of ages was surprisingly wide.”
2nounsetThe set of things available or covered.
“They stock a full range of tools.”
3verbvaryTo vary between stated limits.
“Prices range from ten to fifty pounds.”
4nounreachThe greatest distance at which something can reach, be seen or be heard.
“The ship was still out of range of the guns on the coast.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
A range is a row. Old French rengier meant to rank or to order, from rang, a row, and behind that Frankish hring, a ring. A mountain range and a range of prices are both lines of things set out.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)ker- (turn)
Old French
rengier
Middle English
rengen
English, today
range
Built from
From Middle English rengen, from Old French rengier. From Middle English rengen, from Old French rengier (“to range, to rank, to order”), from the noun renc, reng, ranc, rang (“a rank, row”), from Frankish hring, from Proto-Germanic hringaz (“ring, circle, curve”). a doublet of ring.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA