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.
Such an unusual royal moment is likely to receive widespread media coverage - not least for the opportunity to hear the former Duke of York's first public comments since being stripped of his titles.
From BBC ● Nov. 3, 2026
ES&S, the company that makes the machines garnering the complaints, told ProPublica that the company hadn’t received widespread reports.
From Salon ● Nov. 3, 2026
But this year, there has been more widespread awareness that the wealth we are witnessing is just not the kind of wealth most regular people even have the option to attain.
From Slate ● Nov. 3, 2026
Wong sprang to prominence during widespread protests more than a decade ago, and was later involved in the huge pro-democracy rallies in 2019 that triggered the imposition of the national security law.
From Barron's ● Nov. 3, 2026
Before the recent overseas expansion of Europeans speaking Indo-European languages, Austronesian was the most widespread language family in the world.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
