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countrywide

UK/ˌkʌn.tɹiˈwaɪd/US/ˌkʌn.tɹiˈwaɪd/
adjectiveB2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechmostly written

Countrywide means happening across the whole nation. A countrywide campaign.

It is written as one word, unlike nationwide's close relative country-wide. A countrywide figure hides enormous differences between one region and another.

Definitions of countrywide

  1. 1adjectivecountrywideHappening across the whole nation.B2

    “The countrywide survey took three years to complete.”

countrywide is a quality.

Where it comes from

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *dwóh₁

  2. Middle English

    wid

  3. Old English

    wīd

  4. English

    wide

  5. English, today

    countrywide

From country + -wide. wide comes from Old English wīd. From Middle English wid, wyd, from Old English wīd (“wide, vast, broad, long; distant, far”), from Proto-Germanic wīdaz, from Proto-Indo-European h₁weydʰh₁- (“to divide, separate”), a dissimilated univerbation from dwi- + dʰeh₁-. 2

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

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