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I have a question concerning the meaning of the preposition over in this news article:

The sprawling townhouse has 6,800 square feet of space over five floors, including the ground level, which opens to a meticulously landscaped tiered garden in the back that can also be viewed from a Juliet balcony on the parlor floor.

I checked this dictionary and found definitions 9a and 9b under prepositions over:

9a: so as to cover the surface of (something)
9b: in every part of (a place)

It seems both definitions work well for the usage in the news article. What do native speakers think?

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    "over" five floors would be short for "spread over". Another example is "I served 5 customers over the course of 5 hours".
    – Inazuma
    Apr 1, 2016 at 12:37
  • @Inazuma So, the original was poorly written?
    – meatie
    Apr 1, 2016 at 18:44
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    The original sounds totally fine. That is a very, very common turn of phrase. I understand it to have a word such as "spread or distributed elided: The sprawling townhouse has 6,800 square feet of space [spread] over five floors.
    – Adam
    Apr 1, 2016 at 19:28
  • Adam is correct. Sorry for the lack of clarification.
    – Inazuma
    Apr 2, 2016 at 0:10

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As a native speaker, it's absolutely fine. In this context, it uses Definition 9a.

It pretty much means:

The sprawling townhouse has 6,800 square feet of space shared among five floors...

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