wide
/waɪd/ adjective, adverb, noun
Forms wider widest wides
- adjective Having a large physical extent from side to side. “We walked down a wide corridor.”
- adjective Large in scope. “The inquiry had a wide remit.”
- adjective (slang, derogatory, humorous) Overweight, obese.
- adjective (sports) Operating at the side of the playing area. “That team needs a decent wide player.”
- adjective On one side or the other of the mark; too far sideways from the mark, the wicket, the batsman, etc. “Two balls before lunch, he bowled a wide.”
- adjective (phonetics, dated) Made, as a vowel, with a less tense, and more open and relaxed, condition of the organs in the mouth.
- adjective (Scotland, Northern England, now rare) Vast, great in extent, extensive. “The wide, lifeless expanse.”
- adjective (obsolete) Located some distance away; distant, far.
- adverb Extensively. “He travelled far and wide.”
- adverb Completely. “He was wide awake.”
- adverb Away from or to one side of a given goal. “The arrow fell wide of the mark.”
- adverb So as to leave or have a great space between the sides; so as to form a large opening.
- noun (cricket) A ball that passes so far from the batsman that the umpire deems it unplayable; the arm signal used by an umpire to signal a wide; the extra run added to the batting side's score
Synonyms
broad thick across-the-board all-embracing all-encompassing all-inclusive blanket encompassing extensive panoptic wide-eyed spacious wide-cut full wide of the mark astray widely
Antonyms
Etymology
From Middle English wid, wyd, from Old English wīd (“wide, vast, broad, long; distant, far”), from Proto-Germanic *wīdaz, from Proto-Indo-European *h₁weydʰh₁- (“to divide, separate”), a dissimilated univerbation from *dwi- (“apart, asunder, in two”) + *dʰeh₁- (“to do, put, place”).
Cognate with North Frisian widj (“wide”), Saterland Frisian wied (“wide”), West Frisian wiid (“broad; wide”), Central Franconian weck, weit, wick, wiet (“distant, far, wide”), Dutch wijd (“wide; large; broad”), German weit (“far; wide; broad”), Luxembourgish weit (“wide”), wäit (“far”), Yiddish ווײַט (vayt, “distant, far”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish vid (“wide”), Faroese and Icelandic víður (“wide”); also Breton gwez (“trees”), Cornish gwedh, gwëdh, gwydh, gwÿdh (“trees”), Irish and Scottish Gaelic fiodh (“timber, wood”), Manx fuygh (“timber, wood”), Welsh gwŷdd (“trees”), Latin dīvidō (“to divide, separate”), Latgalian vyds (“middle”), Latvian vidus (“center, middle”), Lithuanian vidùs (“interior, inside; inward”), Tocharian A and Tocharian B wätk- (“to distinguish, separate”). Related to widow.
Webster’s 1913
- 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; as, wide cloth; a wide table; a wide highway; a wide bed; a wide hall or entry.
- adjective Having a great extent every way; extended; spacious; broad; vast; extensive; as, a wide plain; the wide ocean; a wide difference. "This wyde world." Chaucer.
- adverb To a distance; far; widely; to a great distance or extent; as, his fame was spread wide.
- adverb So as to leave or have a great space between the sides; so as to form a large opening. Shak.
Etymology [OE. wid, wyde, AS. wid; akin to OFries. & OS. wid, D. wijd, G. weit, OHG. wit, Icel. vi\'ebr, Sw. & Dan. vid; of uncertain origin.]
Etymology [As. w.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “wide”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details