distribution

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The process of distributing or the condition of being distributed, especially.
• noun The process of marketing and supplying goods, especially to retailers.
• noun Law The transmission of inherited property to its heirs after taxes, debts, and costs of the estate have been paid.
• noun Something distributed; an allotment.
• noun A spatial or temporal array of objects or events, especially.
• noun The geographic occurrence or range of an organism.
• noun The geographic occurrence or range of a custom, usage, or other feature.
• noun Statistics A characterization of the occurrence of the actual unique values in a set of data (as in a frequency distribution) or of the theoretical unique values of a random variable (as in a probability distribution).
• noun Mathematics A generalized function used in the study of partial differential equations.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The act of dividing or parceling out; allotment in shares or according to requirement; apportionment; division among several: as, the distribution of an estate among the heirs; the distribution of justice or of alms; the distribution of parts in a play.
• noun That which is distributed or apportioned.
• noun The act or process of separating and arranging, or the special arrangement secured; separation into distinct order, parts, or classes; systematic or natural arrangement: as, the distribution of printing-types into their boxes (see distribute, II., 2); the distribution of plants into genera and species.
• noun The act of spreading out as over a surface; in printing, the spreading of ink in an even film over the inking-rollers and the inking-table.
• noun In rhetoric: Enumeration of several persons or things, with attribution to each of a special office, function, or characteristic.
• noun The classification of the topics of a discourse by dividing them under different heads: now more commonly called division.
• noun In logic: The distinguishing of a universal whole into its several kinds or species: thus differing from division, by which an integral whole is distinguished into its several parts.
• noun The acceptation of a term in a general sense to apply to many individuals.
• noun In architecture, the arrangement of a plan with reference to walls and open spaces, or to the various services and uses to which the different apartments of an interior are destined; also, the artistic combination of masses, ornaments, wall-openings, various kinds of masonry, etc.—
• noun In political economics, the division of the aggregate produce of the industry of any society among the independent individuals who compose it.—
• noun In steam-engines, the operation by which steam is admitted into and withdrawn from the cylinder at each stroke of the piston.
• noun Synonyms Apportionment, partition, division, disposition, grouping.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The act of distributing or dispensing; the act of dividing or apportioning among several or many; apportionment.
• noun Separation into parts or classes; arrangement of anything into parts; disposition; classification.
• noun That which is distributed.
• noun (Logic) A resolving a whole into its parts.
• noun (Print.) The sorting of types and placing them in their proper boxes in the cases.
• noun (Steam Engine) The steps or operations by which steam is supplied to and withdrawn from the cylinder at each stroke of the piston; viz., admission, suppression or cutting off, release or exhaust, and compression of exhaust steam prior to the next admission.
• noun the natural arrangements of animals and plants in particular regions or districts.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun An act of distributing or state of being distributed.
• noun An apportionment by law (of funds, property).
• noun business, marketing The process by which goods get to final consumers over a geographical market, including storing, selling, shipping and advertising.
• noun The frequency of occurrence or extent of existence.
• noun Anything distributed; portion; share
• noun The result of distributing; arrangement.
• noun mathematics, statistics A probability distribution; the set of relative likelihoods that a variable will have a value in a given interval.
• noun computing A set of bundled software components; distro.
• noun economics The apportionment of income or wealth in a population.
• noun finance The process or result of the sale of securities, especially their placement among investors with long-term investment strategies.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun the act of distributing or spreading or apportioning
• noun the commercial activity of transporting and selling goods from a producer to a consumer
• noun the spatial or geographic property of being scattered about over a range, area, or volume
• noun (statistics) an arrangement of values of a variable showing their observed or theoretical frequency of occurrence