Span
In plain terms
A single timed operation within a distributed trace.
Going deeper
A span represents one unit of work (like a service call) in a trace, with start/end times and metadata. Spans nest to form the full request picture.
Under the hood
Parent-child spans build the trace tree; tags and logs on spans add context.
Examples
Tracing, Jaeger, OpenTelemetry, service calls, latency breakdown.
Think of it like...
Like one leg of a journey recorded with its own start and end times.