What's in a name?
5 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:

Wide \Wide\ (w[imac]d), adjective [Compar. {Wider} (-[~e]r); superl. {Widest}.] [OE. wid, wyde, AS. w[=i]d; akin to OFries. & OS. w[=i]d, D. wijd, G. weit, OHG. w[=i]t, Icel. v[=i][eth]r, Sw. & Dan. vid; of uncertain origin.]

1. 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.

The chambers and the stables weren wyde. --Chaucer.

Wide is the gate . . . that leadeth to destruction. --Matt. vii. 18.

2. 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.

For sceptered cynics earth were far too wide a den. --Byron.

When the wide bloom, on earth that lies, Seems of a brighter world than ours. --Bryant.

3. Of large scope; comprehensive; liberal; broad; as, wide views; a wide understanding.

Men of strongest head and widest culture. --M. Arnold.

4. Of a certain measure between the sides; measuring in a direction at right angles to that of length; as, a table three feet wide.

5. Remote; distant; far.

The contrary being so wide from the truth of Scripture and the attributes of God. --Hammond.

6. Far from truth, from propriety, from necessity, or the like. ''Our wide expositors.'' --Milton.

It is far wide that the people have such judgments. --Latimer.

How wide is all this long pretense ! --Herbert.

7. On one side or the other of the mark; too far side-wise from the mark, the wicket, the batsman, etc.

Surely he shoots wide on the bow hand. --Spenser.

I was but two bows wide. --Massinger.

8. (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 to narrow 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 [=e] ([=e]ve) is [i^] ([i^]ll); of [=a] ([=a]te) is [e^] ([e^]nd), etc. See Guide to Pronunciation, [sect] 13-15.

9. (Stock Exchanges) Having or showing a wide difference between the highest and lowest price, amount of supply, etc.; as, a wide opening; wide prices, where the prices bid and asked differ by several points. [Webster 1913 Suppl.]

Note: Wide is often prefixed to words, esp. to participles and participial adjectives, to form self-explaining compounds; as, wide-beaming, wide-branched, wide-chopped, wide-echoing, wide-extended, wide-mouthed, wide-spread, wide-spreading, and the like.

{Far and wide}. See under {Far}.

{Wide gauge}. See the Note under {Cauge}, 6.

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:

Wide \Wide\, adverb [As. w[imac]de.]

1. To a distance; far; widely; to a great distance or extent; as, his fame was spread wide.

[I] went wyde in this world, wonders to hear. --Piers Plowman.

2. So as to leave or have a great space between the sides; so as to form a large opening. --Shak.

3. So as to be or strike far from, or on one side of, an object or purpose; aside; astray.

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:

Wide \Wide\, noun

1. That which is wide; wide space; width; extent. ''The waste wide of that abyss.'' --Tennyson.

2. That which goes wide, or to one side of the mark.

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

wide

adjective

1: having great (or a certain) extent from one side to the other; "wide roads"; "a wide necktie"; "wide margins"; "three feet wide"; "a river two miles broad"; "broad shoulders"; "a broad river" [syn: {broad}] [ant: {narrow}]

2: broad in scope or content; "across-the-board pay increases"; "an all-embracing definition"; "blanket sanctions against human-rights violators"; "an invention with broad applications"; "a panoptic study of Soviet nationality"- T.G.Winner; "granted him wide powers" [syn: {across-the-board}, {all-embracing}, {all-encompassing}, {all-inclusive}, {blanket(a)}, {broad}, {encompassing}, {panoptic}]

3: (used of eyes) fully open or extended; "listened in round-eyed wonder"; "stared with wide eyes" [syn: {round-eyed}, {wide-eyed}]

4: very large in expanse or scope; "a broad lawn"; "the wide plains"; "a spacious view"; "spacious skies" [syn: {broad}, {spacious}]

5: great in degree; "won by a wide margin" [ant: {narrow}]

6: great in range or scope; "an extended vocabulary"; "surgeons with extended experience"; "extensive examples of picture writing"; "suffered extensive damage"; "a wide selection" [syn: {extended}, {extensive}]

7: having ample fabric; "the current taste for wide trousers"; "a full skirt" [syn: {wide-cut}, {full}]

8: not on target; "the kick was wide"; "the arrow was wide of the mark"; "a claim that was wide of the truth" [syn: {wide of the mark}]

adverb

1: with or by a broad space; "stand with legs wide apart"; "ran wide around left end"

2: to the fullest extent possible; "open your eyes wide"; "with the throttle wide open"

3: far from the intended target; "the arrow went wide of the mark"; "a bullet went astray and killed a bystander" [syn: {astray}]

4: to or over a great extent or range; far; "wandered wide through many lands"; "he traveled widely" [syn: {widely}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

215 Moby Thesaurus words for "wide": aberrant, abroad, abstract, accented, adrift, advanced, afield, all abroad, all off, all wrong, alveolar, amiss, ample, amplitudinous, apical, apico-alveolar, apico-dental, articulated, askew, assimilated, astray, at fault, awry, back, barytone, beside the mark, bilabial, bland, broad, broad-gauged, broad-minded, broadly, cacuminal, capacious, catholic, central, cerebral, checked, clear, close, collective, commodious, comprehensive, consonant, consonantal, continuant, copious, corrupt, cosmopolitan, deceptive, deep, defective, delusive, dental, deviant, deviational, deviative, diffuse, dissimilated, distantly and broadly, distorted, dorsal, ecumenical, ecumenistic, errant, erring, erroneous, expansive, extended, extending, extensive, fallacious, false, far afield, far and near, far and wide, far-embracing, far-extending, far-flung, far-flying, far-going, far-ranging, far-reaching, faultful, faulty, featureless, flat, flawed, front, full, general, generalized, generic, generous, glide, glossal, glottal, guttural, hard, heavy, heretical, heterodox, high, illogical, illusory, indefinite, indeterminate, indiscriminate, infinite, intonated, labial, labiodental, labiovelar, large-scale, lateral, lax, liberal, light, lingual, liquid, low, mid, monophthongal, muted, narrow, nasal, nasalized, nebulous, neutral, noninsular, nonspecific, not right, not true, occlusive, off, off the track, open, out, oxytone, palatal, palatalized, peccant, perverse, perverted, pharyngeal, pharyngealized, phonemic, phonetic, phonic, pitch, pitched, posttonic, progressive, radical, retroflex, roomy, rounded, scopic, self-contradictory, semivowel, soft, sonant, spacious, spacious of mind, spreading, stopped, straying, stressed, strong, surd, sweeping, syllabic, tense, thick, throaty, tolerant, tonal, tonic, twangy, unaccented, unbigoted, uncharacterized, undifferentiated, unfactual, unfanatical, unhidebound, unorthodox, unparochial, unproved, unprovincial, unrounded, unspecified, unstressed, untrue, vague, vast, velar, vocalic, vocoid, voiced, voiceless, voluminous, vowel, vowellike, weak, wholesale, wide-extended, wide-extending, wide-minded, wide-ranging, wide-reaching, wide-stretching, widely, widespread, wrong

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