The most common and most likely answer to this crossword clue is the 12 letter word DISTRIBUTION
I've seen this crossword clue in The Guardian
D
I
S
T
R
I
B
U
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O
N
Buddy explains!
The straight part
We know that "spread" is the straight/definition part of the clue. The straight part is often a synonym or definition, in this case spread = distribution.The cryptic/wordplay part
In cryptic crossword there's often an wordplay/cryptic part as well.This part involves a more complex hint, such as an anagram, homophone, hidden word, etc.
Sadly, We don't have an explanation for this specific crossword clue yet.
What does DISTRIBUTION mean?
DISTRIBUTION noun- An act of distributing or state of being distributed.
- An apportionment by law (of funds, property).
- The process by which goods get to final consumers over a geographical market, including storing, selling, shipping and advertising.
- Anything distributed; portion; share.
- The result of distributing; arrangement.
- The total number of something sold or delivered to the clients.
- The frequency of occurrence or extent of existence.
- The apportionment of income or wealth in a population.
- The way in which a player's hand is divided in suits, or in which a particular suit is divided between the players.
- A probability distribution; the set of relative likelihoods that a variable will have a value in a given interval.
- A subset of the tangent bundle of a manifold that satisfies certain properties; used to construct the notions of integrability and foliation of a manifold.
- A set of bundled software components; distro.
- The process or result of the sale of securities, especially their placement among investors with long-term investment strategies.
- The resolution of a whole into its parts.
- The process of sorting the types and placing them in their proper boxes in the cases.
- (steam engines) The steps or operations by which steam is supplied to and withdrawn from the cylinder at each stroke of the piston: admission, suppression or cutting off, release or exhaust, and compression of exhaust steam prior to the next admission.
- A rhetorical technique in which a subject is divided into multiple cases based on some property or properties, and each case is addressed individually.