length

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

• noun The state, quality, or fact of being long.
• noun The measurement of the extent of something along its greatest dimension.
• noun A piece, often of a standard size, that is normally measured along its greatest dimension.
• noun A measure used as a unit to estimate distances.
• noun Extent or distance from beginning to end.
• noun The amount of time between specified moments; the duration.
• noun Extent or degree to which an action or policy is carried.
• noun The duration of a vowel.
• noun The duration of a syllable.
• noun The vertical extent of a garment. Often used in combination.
• idiom (at length) After some time; eventually.
• idiom (at length) For a considerable time; fully.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To extend; lengthen.
• noun In the brachiopod shell, the distance from the apex of the more projecting valve axially to the anterior margin.
• noun In the pelecypod shell, commonly the greatest distance across the shell fore and aft, but more correctly the distance from the beak obliquely along the crescence-line, or line of most rapid growth.
• noun In cricket: The distance between the bowler's wicket and the spot where the ball pitches: said of a ball bowled.
• noun The proper distance at which a ball bowled should pitch; a good pitch.
• noun The property of being long or extended in a single direction; also, that which is long.
• noun Distance along a line, as measured, for example, upon the circumference of a wheel that rolls over it: as, the length of a road, a river, or the arc of a curve.
• noun The magnitude of the greatest principal axis of a body or figure; one of the dimensions of a body, the others being breadth and thickness. See dimension, 1.
• noun Reach; power of reaching; extent of range: as, the length of one's vision or of a view.
• noun Extent of or in time; duration; continuance: as, the length of a day or a year, or of life; the length of a battle or a performance; a discourse of tedious length.
• noun In orthoëpy and prosody:
• noun The time occupied in uttering a vowel or syllable; quantity.
• noun The quality of a vowel as long or short, according to the conventional distinction of long and short in English pronunciation.
• noun The quality of a syllable as metrically accented or unaccented in modern or accentual poetry. See long, adjective
• noun A piece or portion of the extent of anything in space or time; a part of what is extended or elongated: as, a length of rope; a dress-length; to cut anything into short lengths: often used specifically of a definite portion, of known extent, of the thing spoken of, as of an acting drama (namely, forty or forty-two lines): as, an actor's part of six lengths; won by a length (that is, of the horse, boat, etc., engaged in the contest).
• noun In archery, the distance from the archer to the target he is to shoot at.
• noun After a time; at last; at the end, or at a point of transition: as, at length he came to a spring; at length they were subdued.
• noun To go to the extent of; rise to the pitch or height of: commonly used of inordinate action or speech: as, he went to the length of tearing down his house, of denying his identity, or of sacrificing his own interests.

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

• transitive verb obsolete To lengthen.
• noun The longest, or longer, dimension of any object, in distinction from breadth or width; extent of anything from end to end; the longest line which can be drawn through a body, parallel to its sides
• noun A portion of space or of time considered as measured by its length; -- often in the plural.
• noun The quality or state of being long, in space or time; extent; duration
• noun A single piece or subdivision of a series, or of a number of long pieces which may be connected together
• noun Detail or amplification; unfolding; continuance as, to pursue a subject to a great length.
• noun obsolete Distance.
• noun At the end or conclusion; after a long period. See Syn. of At last, under Last.
• noun See under Arm.

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

• noun The measurement of distance along the longest dimension of an object.
• noun duration
• noun horse racing The length of a horse, used to indicate the distance between horses at the end of a race.
• noun mathematics Distance between the two ends of a line segment.
• noun cricket The distance down the pitch that the ball bounces on its way to the batsman.
• noun figuratively : total extent
• noun part of something that's long, a physical piece of something
• verb obsolete To lengthen.

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

• noun the property of being the extent of something from beginning to end
• noun size of the gap between two places