Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Having a specified extent from side to side.
- adjective Extending over a great distance from side to side; broad.
- adjective Having great extent or range; including much or many.
- adjective Fully open or extended.
- adjective To the side of or at a distance from a given boundary, limit, or goal.
- adjective Baseball Outside.
- adjective Sports Being toward or near one of the side boundaries of a playing area, such as a sideline on a football field.
- adjective Deviating or straying from something expected or specified.
- adjective Linguistics Lax.
- adverb Over a great distance; extensively.
- adverb To the full extent; completely.
- adverb To the side of or at a distance from a given boundary, limit, or goal.
- adverb Sports Toward or near one of the sides of a playing area.
- noun A ball bowled outside of the batsman's reach, counting as a run for the batting team in cricket.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Having relatively great or considerable extension from side to side; broad: as, wide cloth; a wide hall: opposed to narrow.
- Having (a certain or specified) extension as measured from side to side; having (a specified) width or breadth: as, cloth a yard wide.
- Of great horizontal extent; spacious; extensive; vast; great: as, the wide ocean.
- Embracing many subjects; looking at a question from many points of view; applicable to many cases: as, a person of wide culture.
- Capacious; bulging; loose; voluminous.
- Distended; expanded; spread apart; hence, open.
- Apart or remote from a specified point; distant; hence, remote from the direct line or object aimed at; too far or too much to one side; deviating; errant; wild: as, a wide arrow in archery; a wide ball in cricket.
- Amiss; unfortunate; ill; bad; hence, of little avail; useless.
- In phonetics, uttered with a comparatively relaxed or expanded condition of the walls of the buccal cavity: said by some phonetists of certain vowels, as ĕ, ĭ, ŏ, ŭ, when compared with ā, ē, â, ė.
- Synonyms Wide, Broad, spacious, large, ample. Wide and broad may be synonymous, but broad is generally the larger and more emphatic: a wide river is not thought of as so far across as a broad river. Wide is sometimes more applicable to that which is to be passed through: as, a wide mouth or aperture. It is another way of stating this fact to say that wide has more in mind than broad the limiting sides of the thing. Wide is also more generally applicable to that of which the length is much greater than the width, but not to the exclusion of broad. Each may in a secondary sense be used of length and breadth: as, broad acres; a wide domain.
- noun Wideness; breadth; extent.
- noun In cricket, a ball that goes wide of the wicket, and counts one against the side that is bowling.
- To make wide; spread or set far apart.
- To a distance; afar; widely; a long way; abroad; extensively.
- Away or to one side of the mark, aim, purpose, or direct line; hence, astray.
- Round about; in the neighborhood around.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adverb To a distance; far; widely; to a great distance or extent.
- adverb So as to leave or have a great space between the sides; so as to form a large opening.
- adverb So as to be or strike far from, or on one side of, an object or purpose; aside; astray.
- noun That which is wide; wide space; width; extent.
- noun That which goes wide, or to one side of the mark.
- adjective Having considerable distance or extent between the sides; spacious across; much extended in a direction at right angles to that of length; not narrow; broad
- adjective Having a great extent every way; extended; spacious; broad; vast; extensive.
- adjective Of large scope; comprehensive; liberal; broad.
- adjective Of a certain measure between the sides; measuring in a direction at right angles to that of length.
- adjective Remote; distant; far.
- adjective Far from truth, from propriety, from necessity, or the like.
- adjective On one side or the other of the mark; too far side-wise from the mark, the wicket, the batsman, etc.
- adjective (Phon.) Made, as a vowel, with a less tense, and more open and relaxed, condition of the mouth organs; -- opposed to
primary as used by Mr. Bell, and tonarrow as used by Mr. Sweet. The effect, as explained by Mr. Bell, is due to the relaxation or tension of the pharynx; as explained by Mr. Sweet and others, it is due to the action of the tongue. The wide of ē (ēve) is ĭ (ĭll); of ā (āte) is ĕ (ĕnd), etc. SeeGuide to Pronunciation , § 13-15. - adjective (Stock Exchanges) Having or showing a wide difference between the highest and lowest price, amount of supply, etc..
- adjective See under
Far . - adjective See the Note under
Cauge , 6.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Having a large physical extent from side to side.
- adjective Large in scope.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Mr. Nguyen's cooperation — along with the recent arrests and cooperation of other witnesses — could strengthen prosecutors' efforts to bring charges against others suspected of aiding what they describe as a wide-ranging web of insider trading, securities lawyers say.
'Expert' Analyst Admits Recruiting Leakers Jenny Strasburg 2011
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There was a struggle at first against this assumption, but the drama has become a classic, and it is now generally allowed, that so long as poetry is a term wide enough to include The Clouds and the Second Part of
Henrik Ibsen 2008
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What we're finding is that six states have what they call wide-spread activity including two Super Tuesday states, New York and New Jersey.
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There was a struggle at first against this assumption, but the drama has become a classic, and it is now generally allowed, that so long as poetry is a term wide enough to include The Clouds and the Second Part of
Henrik Ibsen 2008
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Google is now partnering with scientists who are building what they call a wide-field telescope.
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PAULA NEWTON, CNNI CORRESPONDENT: Isha, it is what you call a wide-ranging speech, these are sweeping measures.
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Now, this is one of the few what we call wide shots that we've seen tonight of the House chamber throughout the evening.
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Pandor also denied what she called a wide-spread belief that the new curriculum was easier than its predecessor.
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Habibie of Indonesia announced that Indonesia would be prepared to have before Christmas 1999 what amounted in the end to a referendum in East Timor, where the people of East Timor would be able to determine whether they wanted to accept an Indonesian Government of what they called wide-ranging autonomy or whether, on the other hand, the people of East Timor would like full independence from
Media gateway - Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade 2000
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There was a struggle at first against this assumption, but the drama has become a classic, and it is now generally allowed, that so long as poetry is a term wide enough to include _The Clouds_ and the Second Part of _Faust_, it must be made wide enough to take in a poem as unique as they are in its majestic intellectual caprices.
Henrik Ibsen Edmund Gosse 1888
jeen0809 commented on the word wide
A farm contains wide and vast land.
March 22, 2007
bilby commented on the word wide
Cricket jargon - a ball bowled too wide for the batsman to effectively make a scoring shot. The penalty for a wide is one run against the bowling team and the requirement that the ball be bowled again. This is a particularly severe penalty in limited-overs matches.
December 2, 2007