Other forms: wider, widest
Wide means there is a lot of distance from one side to the other. A wide river you would not want to swim across, a doorway wide enough to carry a sofa through, a wide grin that goes from ear to ear.
Wide is also how you give a width, and it comes after the number: the table is two metres wide. It stretches past physical space into range, so you get a wide selection of teas, a wide variety of opinions, a plan with wide support. Eyes go wide when you are shocked, and the adverb turns up in wide awake, wide open, and a shot that goes wide of the goal. The opposite is narrow. Careful with people: shoulders and smiles are broad rather than wide, and a wide box is one that spreads sideways, not a big one.
1adjectivewideMeasuring a large distance from one side to the other.~48%
“The gate was just wide enough for the tractor to pass through.”
synonyms: broad
2adjectivebroadCovering a large range of things, people or ideas.~48%
“The shop keeps a wide selection of teas.”
synonyms: broad, extensive
3adjectiveopenedOpened as far as it will go.~2%
“She stood in the doorway with her eyes wide.”
4adverbaimedAway from the thing being aimed at.~2%
“His pass went wide and the ball rolled out of play.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 14 sentences found in the wild and placed 14 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: broad
Wide goes back through Middle English wid to Old English wīd, which already covered wide, vast, broad and far, and before that to Proto-Germanic wīdaz, the word that also gave German weit and Dutch wijd. The oldest root reconstructed for it is Proto-Indo-European h₁weydʰh₁-, meaning to divide or separate. Width was the gap left once two things had been pushed apart.
Proto-Indo-European
*dwóh₁
Middle English
wid
Old English
wīd
English, today
wide
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