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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

subtend.

To use an angle to delimit (mark off, enclose) part of a straight or curved line, for example an arc or the opposite side of a triangle.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/sʌbˈtɛnd/
  1. To use an angle to delimit (mark off, enclose) part of a straight or curved line, for example an arc or the opposite side of a triangle.

    transitive
    A 43° angle subtends an arc of about 0.75 meters on a circle with a radius of 1 meter.
  2. To extend or stretch opposite something; to be part of a straight or curved line that is opposite to and delimits an angle.

    also · transitive
    A hypotenuse subtends the right angle of a right triangle.
    An arc measuring about 0.75 meters on a circle with a radius of 1 meter subtends an angle of about 43°.
  3. To form the central angle of a circle underneath an arc.

    transitive
    The points A and B on the circumference form the arc AB, which subtends the central angle θ.
  4. To stand beneath or close to, as a bract at the base of a flower.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

From Latin subtendere, from sub (“under”) + tendere (“to stretch, extend”), itself a semantic loan from Ancient Greek ὑποτείνω (hupoteínō, “to subtend”), from which hypotenuse also derives. See tend.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.