Noun

Singular space

Plural countable and uncountable; plural spaces

space (countable and uncountable; plural spaces)

1. The intervening contents of a volume.
2. (uncountable) Space occupied by or intended for a person or thing.
3. (countable) An area or volume of sufficient size to accommodate a person or thing.
4. A while.
5. The volume beyond the atmosphere of planets that consists of a relative vacuum.
6. The volume beyond the Kármán line that lies 100km above mean sea level of the Earth.
7. A gap between written or printed letters, numbers, characters, or lines; a blank.
   1. In digital text, a character representing a space ( ).
8. (letterpress typography) A piece of metal type used to separate words, cast lower than other type so as not to take ink, especially one that is narrower than one en (compare quad).
   • 1683, Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises: Or, the Doctrine of Handy-Works. Applied to the art of Printing., v 2, pp. 240–41:

     If it be only a Single Letter or two that drops, he thruſts the end of his Bodkin between every Letter of that Word, till he comes to a Space: and then perhaps by forcing thoſe Letters closer, he may have room to put in another Space or a Thin Space; which if he cannot do, and he finds the Space ſtand Looſe in the Form; he with the Point of his Bodkin picks the Space up and bows it a little; which bowing makes the Letters on each ſide of the Space keep their parallel diſtance; for by its Spring it thruſts the Letters that were cloſed with the end of the Bodkin to their adjunct Letters, that needed no cloſing.

   • 1979, Marshall Lee, Bookmaking, p 110:

     Horizontal spacing is further divided into multiples and fractions of the em. The multiples are called quads. The fractions are called spaces.

   • 2005, Phil Baines and Andrew Haslam, Type & Typography, 2nd ed, p 91:

     Other larger spaces – known as quads – were used to space out lines.

9. (geometry) A set of points, each of which is uniquely specified by a set of coordinates; the number of coordinates specifying a point and the number of mutually perpendicular axes along which the coordinates lie are the same, and that is the number of dimensions of the space.
10. One's personal freedom to think or be oneself.
11. The state of mind one is in when daydreaming.
12. (mathematics) a generalized construct or set, the members of which have certain properties in common; often used in combination with the name of a particular mathematician
13. (Indian philosophy) One of the five basic elements.

Quotations

• For more examples of the usage of this term see the citations page.

Synonyms

• (intervening contents of a volume): volume
• (space occupied by or intended for a person or thing): room, volume
• (area or volume of sufficient size to accommodate a person or thing): place, spot, volume
• (area beyond the atmosphere of planets that consists of a vacuum): outer space
• (gap between written characters): blank, gap, whitespace (graphic design)
• (metal type): quad, quadrat
• (set of points each uniquely specified by a set of coordinates):
• (person freedom to think or be oneself):
• (state of mind one is in when daydreaming):
• (generalized construct or set in mathematics):
• (one of the five basic elements in Indian philosophy):

Derived terms

• (typography): em space, 2-em space, 3-em space, en space, hair space, mutton space, nut space, thin space, thick space

Related terms

• address space
• aerospace
• affine space
• airspace, air space
• backspace
• Baire space
• Banach space
• base space
• breathing space
• chemical space
• column space
• compact space
• conjugate space
• connected space
• crawl space, crawlspace
• cyberspace
• danger space
• dark space
• dead-air space
• dead space
• deep space
• double-space
• drift space
• dual space
• Einstein space
• espace
• Euclidean space
• exceptional space
• exotic four-space
• fishing space
• flat space
• Foch space
• Fourier space
• Fréchet space
• free space
• function space
• G space
• hair space
• half space
• Hausdorff space
• headspace
• Hilbert space
• homeomorphic space
• homogeneous space
• hydrospace
• hyperbolic space
• hyperspace
• image space
• inertial space
• inner product space
• interaction space
• interplanetary space
• interspace
• interstellar space
• intervillous space
• isometric space
• joint space
• justifying space
• lacunary space
• Lindelöf space
• loading space
• measurable space
• metacompact space
• metric space
• metrizable space
• Minkowski space
• Moore space
• namespace
• n space

• n-dimensional space
• normal space
• normed linear space
• null space
• object space
• open half space
• orbit space
• orthogonal space
• outer space
• paracompact space
• Pauli spin space
• Peano space
• perfectly separable space
• perivitelline space
• phase space
• Polish space
• popliteal space
• pore space
• probability space
• problem space
• projective space
• quotient space
• reflexive Banach space
• regular space
• regular topological space
• Riemann space
• sample space
• separable space
• sequentially compact space
• shrinking space
• single-space
• space age, Space Age
• space alien
• space attenuation
• space bar
• space biology
• space blanket
• spaceborne
• space cadet
• space capsule
• space centrode
• space charge
• space cloth
• space communication
• space cone
• space coordinate
• spacecraft
• space current
• space curve
• spaced
• space defence, space defense
• spaced-out
• space environment
• space factor
• spacefaring
• space fixed reference
• space flight
• space frame
• spaceful
• space group
• space guidance
• space heater
• space hopper
• space junk
• space lattice
• spaceless
• spacelike
• spaceman
• space medicine

• space mission
• space motion
• space navigation
• space out
• space perception
• space permeability
• space polar coordinate
• spaceport
• space power system
• space probe
• space processing
• space quadrature
• space quantization
• spacer
• space race
• space reconnaissance
• space reddening
• space request
• space research
• space satellite
• space science
• spaceship
• space shuttle
• space sickness
• space simulator
• space station
• space suit
• space suppression
• space technology
• space tourism
• space velocity
• space walk
• spaceward
• space wave
• space weapon
• space weather
• space writer
• space-time
• spacey
• spacious
• spin space
• state space
• strictly convex space
• subarachnoid space
• subspace
• sunspace
• suprasternal
• symmetric space
• T0 space
• T1 space
• T3 space
• T4 space
• tangent space
• tensor space
• three-space
• topological space
• total space
• triangulable space
• Tychonoff space
• uniform space
• unitary space
• vector space
• watch this space
• wave-vector space
• weakly complete space
• white space, whitespace
• workspace

Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of the boundless four-dimensional continuum known as spacetime. In mathematics spaces with different numbers of dimensions and with different underlying structures can be examined. The concept of space is considered to be of fundamental importance to an understanding of the universe although disagreement continues between philosophers over whether it is itself an entity, a relationship between entities, or part of a conceptual framework.

Many of the philosophical questions arose in the 17th century, during the early development of classical mechanics. In Isaac Newton's view, space was absolute - in the sense that it existed permanently and independently of whether there were any matter in the space. Other natural philosophers, notably Gottfried Leibniz, thought instead that space was a collection of relations between objects, given by their distance and direction from one another. In the 18th century, Immanuel Kant described space and time as elements of a systematic framework which humans use to structure their experience.

In the 19th and 20th centuries mathematicians began to examine non-Euclidean geometries, in which space can be said to be curved, rather than flat. According to Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, space around gravitational fields deviates from Euclidean space. Experimental tests of general relativity have confirmed that non-Euclidean space provides a better model for explaining the existing laws of mechanics and optics.

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