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.
The deaths of former premier Zhou Enlai in 1976 and Hu Yaobang, a former CCP general secretary, in 1989, prompted widespread outpourings of grief that morphed into protests.
From BBC ● Aug. 18, 2026
Hicks’ rare public move urging low-polling Democratic candidates, which included every minority candidate of color in the race, to consider their viability sparked widespread controversy during the primary.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 17, 2026
"What started as a discovery in a single marine worm turned out to be a widespread capability shared by animals from very different branches of the tree of life."
From Science Daily ● Aug. 17, 2026
“There is also a widespread view in Iran that the main war has not yet begun,” said Mohammad Hassan Sangtarash, a Tehran-based defense analyst close to the Iranian government.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 17, 2026
It seemed to many, including Karl Marx who published the first part of Das Kapital in 1867, to promote nothing but widespread poverty, inequality and hopelessness.
From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall
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.
