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widely

UK/ˈwaɪdli/US/ˈwaɪdli/
adverbB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,985 of 15,258mostly written

Widely means over a large area or among many people. Widely known, widely read, travel widely.

It usually reports agreement or reach without naming anybody, which is why widely believed and widely reported deserve a second look: they can mean everybody thinks so or that the writer would rather not say who does.

Definitions of widely

  1. 1adverbwidelyOver a large area or among many people.B2

    “English is widely spoken in the Netherlands.”

widely is a degree.

Where it comes from

Wide plus -ly, from Old English wid, broad.

  1. Middle English

    wijdly

  2. English, today

    widely

From Middle English wijdly, equivalent to wide + -ly.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

widely in the wild

  • The crore is widely used both in official and other contexts in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan.

    Crore

  • The barn owls are owls in the genus Tyto, the most widely distributed genus of owls in the world.

    Barn owl

  • The recipe for drisheen varies widely from place to place and it also differs depending on the time of year.

    Drisheen

  • How this is done varies widely from place to place.

    Drisheen

  • Mr Arour's views, once widely dismissed as extreme, now look closer to the terrorism and extremism, at least among the three-quarters of Syrians who are non-Sunni".

    Adnan al-Arur

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

  • wide
  • widen
  • width