Verb

(en verb)

(label) To encircle something or simultaneously extend in all directions.

*{{quote-book, year=1944, author=(w)

, title= The Three Corpse Trick, chapter=5 , passage=The hovel stood in the centre of what had once been a vegetable garden, but was now a patch of rank weeds. Surrounding this, almost like a zareba, was an irregular ring of gorse and brambles, an unclaimed vestige of the original common.}}

*{{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham)

, title=(The China Governess) , chapter=3 citation , passage=Sepia Delft tiles surrounded the fireplace, their crudely drawn Biblical scenes in faded cyclamen blending with the pinkish pine, while above them, instead of a mantelshelf, there was an archway high enough to form a balcony with slender balusters and a tapestry-hung wall behind.}}

* 2005 , (Plato), Sophist . Translation by Lesley Brown. .

and this way they get rid of those grand and stubborn opinions that surround them.

(label) To enclose or confine something on all sides so as to prevent escape.

To pass around; to travel about; to circumnavigate.

(Fuller)

Verb

To stretch out, open out (a material etc.) so that it more fully covers a given area of space.

To extend (individual rays, limbs etc.); to stretch out in varying or opposing directions.

To disperse, to scatter or distribute over a given area.

To proliferate; to become more widely present, to be disseminated.

*

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-20, volume=408, issue=8845, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Old soldiers? , passage=Whether modern, industrial man is less or more warlike than his hunter-gatherer ancestors is impossible to determine.

To disseminate; to cause to proliferate, to make (something) widely known or present.

To take up a larger area or space; to expand, be extended.

To smear, to distribute in a thin layer.

To cover (something) with a thin layer of some substance, as of butter.

To prepare; to set and furnish with provisions.

to spread a table

* Tennyson

Boiled the flesh, and spread the board.

(slang) To open one’s legs.

* 1984 , (Martin Amis), :

This often sounds like the rap of a demented DJ: the way she moves has got to be good news, can't get loose till I feel the juice— suck and spread , bitch, yeah bounce for me baby.

* 1991 , (Tori Amos), (Me and a Gun) :

Yes I wore a slinky red thing. Does that mean I should spread for you, your friends, your father, Mr Ed?

* 2003 , (Outkast), "Spread" (from the album ):

I don't want to move too fast, but / Can't resist your sexy ass / Just spread', ' spread for me; / (I can't, I can't wait to get you home)