dispread
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Verb
[edit]dispread (third-person singular simple present dispreads, present participle dispreading, simple past and past participle dispreaded)
- (archaic, rare) To spread out, to extend.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
- In widest Ocean she her throne does reare, / That ouer all the earth it may be seene; / As morning Sunne her beames dispredden cleare [...].
- 1817 December, Percy Bysshe Shelley, “The Revolt of Islam. […]”, in [Mary] Shelley, editor, The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. […], volume I, London: Edward Moxon […], published 1839, →OCLC, page 269:
- her dark hair was dispread,
Like the pine’s locks upon the lingering blast;
Over mine eyes its shadowy strings it spread
Fitfully, and the hills and streams fled fast,
As o’er their glimmering forms the steed’s broad shadow past; […]
- 1859, George Meredith, chapter 13, in The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. A History of Father and Son. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC:
- The lamp which ultimately was sure to be lifted up to illumine the acts of this secretive race began slowly to dispread its rays …