Definitions

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

  • noun The measure or dimension from side to side; width.
  • noun A piece usually produced in a standard width.
  • noun Wide range or scope.
  • noun Tolerance; broadmindedness.
  • noun An effect of unified, encompassing vision in an artistic composition.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The measure of the second principal diameter of a surface or solid, the first being length, and the third (in the case of a solid) thickness.
  • noun Hence Figuratively, largeness; freedom from narrowness or restraint; liberality: as, breadth of culture, breadth of view, etc.
  • noun That quality in a work of art, whether pictorial or plastic, which is obtained by the simple, clear rendering of essential forms, and the strict subordination of details to general effect.
  • noun In logic, extension; an aggregate of subjects of which a logical term can be predicated.
  • noun Something that has breadth; specifically, a piece of a fabric of the regular width; a width.

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

  • noun Distance from side to side of any surface or thing; measure across, or at right angles to the length; width.

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

  • noun The extent or measure of how broad or wide something is.
  • noun A piece of fabric of standard width.
  • noun Scope or range, especially of knowledge or skill.
  • noun mathematics (graph theory) the length of the longest path between two vertices on a graph

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

  • noun the extent of something from side to side
  • noun the capacity to understand a broad range of topics

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English bredth, breth, alteration (on the model of length, length) of brede, from Old English brǣd.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

broad +‎ -th

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Examples

Comments

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  • A wide bread eaten by Puritans, and referred to in their thanksgiving prayer ‘Lord, we thank thee, for thou hath given us out of thy bounty our daily breadth’.

    April 20, 2011

  • Pumpernickel, sourdough, ciabatta, pita, challah. I have a great breadth of knowledge.

    April 1, 2015