adjective
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extending over a wide area
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accepted by or occurring among many people
Etymology
Origin of widespread
Explanation
Widespread means far-reaching. For years, email was used only by computer programmers and technophiles. It was hard to imagine, back then, how widespread the phenomenon of digital communication would become. An idea that's widespread, is believed by many people, even if it's not true. A person such as Oprah, Gandhi, or Beyoncé, who has widespread popularity, is loved by many far and wide. A widespread disease is one that many people have — the flu epidemic of 1919 was deadly and widespread.
Vocabulary lists containing widespread
"The Civil Rights Movement"
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100 SAT words Beginning with W,X,Y, and Z
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"Laws are not the only way to boost immunization”: an editorial from Nature
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Together, these observations suggest that BFA-related chemistry and kidney physiology may be widespread across Felidae, while also having changed and diversified over the course of feline evolution.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 20, 2026
Looks and physical attractiveness have influenced American politics since the widespread adoption of television, and Ossoff isn’t the first or the only political candidate the internet has thirsted over.
From Salon ● Sep. 20, 2026
Ritwik Gupta, a computer science and AI professor at the University of Maryland, believes that pacing the frontier is contingent upon on widespread cooperation among labs.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 19, 2026
Investors often make investment decisions on inflation expectations and the price of oil is a major factor in prices rising across the world, given the commodity's widespread use and humanity's dependence on it.
From BBC ● Sep. 18, 2026
He argued that at this time of morning, viewership would be low, especially locally with the widespread power outages.
From "Storm Runners" by Roland Smith
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
