Widespread

How to spell widespread

10 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce widespread

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does widespread mean?

1. adjectiveFound, distributed, or occurring over a large area or among many people.

Widespread in a sentence

• The storm caused widespread damage across the region.

• There was widespread support for the new policy among staff.

Where does widespread come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Widespread is a compound formed from two very old native English words. The first element, 'wide', comes from the Old English 'wid', meaning broad or extending far in space, and it has cousins across the Germanic languages such as Dutch 'wijd' and German 'weit'. The second element, 'spread', descends from the Old English verb 'sprdan', meaning to stretch or scatter something over a surface. The two were joined into a single descriptive adjective in the early modern period, with the modern compound becoming common from the seventeenth century onward to describe something distributed over a large area or affecting many people. Because both halves are plain Anglo-Saxon words rather than borrowings, the spelling is regular; the only real trap is remembering that it is written as one solid word, not as 'wide spread'.

How the word is built

• wide (broad, extending far)
• spread (to extend over an area)