Other forms: widths
Width is how wide something is from side to side. Measure the width, the width of the room, a width of fabric.
It is the second dimension after length, and which is which is decided by convention rather than by the object — for a room, width is the shorter side. In swimming, a width is across the pool where a length is along it. Note widthways; and that width is a surprisingly late word, not attested before about 1600.
1nounwidthHow wide something is from side to side.
“Measure the width of the window before you buy curtains.”
2noundistanceThe distance across a swimming pool.
“The children swam a width of the pool without armbands.”
width is a measurement.
Wide plus -th, on the model of length and breadth. It is late — not attested before about 1600 — where breadth had done the job for centuries.
Proto-Indo-European
*dwóh₁
Middle English
wid
Old English
wīd
English
wide
English, today
width
From wide + th, possibly by analogy with Old Norse vídd (“width”), though this is unlikely, as the word is not attested before the end of the 16th century and was historically unknown in Scots and the traditional dialect of Northern England, where one would expect Old Norse influence to be the strongest (these varieties traditionally employed wideness instead). Replaced Middle English wide, wyde (“width”). 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