widespreadadj.

1582 R. Stanyhurst tr. Virgil First Foure Bookes Æneis i. 12 Her trayne syd flagging lyke wyde spread Conopye trayled.

1648 J. Beaumont Psyche xvi. cxliv. 308/1 His wide-spred silver Fethers.

1681 C. Saunders Tamerlane i. i. 6 Threw him into my wide-spread Arms.

1683 W. Kennett tr. Erasmus Witt against Wisdom 113 Every King, within his own Territories, is placed for a shining Example, as it were in the Firmament of his wide-spread Dominions.

1735 W. Somervile Chace i. 250 Strait Hams, and wide-spread Thighs.

1776 W. J. Mickle tr. L. de Camoens Lusiad 126 The mountain and the wide-spread lawn Afford no foot-room for the crowded foe.

1816 W. Wordsworth Who rises on Banks of Seine 4 How sweet to rest her wide-spread wings beneath!

1863 A. C. Ramsay Physical Geol. & Geogr. Great Brit. 124 On the western parts of the Weald,..there are some very wide-spread heaths.

1878 T. Hardy Return of Native I. i. iii. 43 A wide-spread woman whose stays creaked like shoes whenever she stooped or turned.

1961 E. Palmer & N. Pitman Trees S. Afr. 168 The flatcrown is a common tree along the eastern coast..its flat, wide-spread crown and horizontally growing leaves distinguishing it from surrounding trees.

2008 Independent 13 Oct. (Life section) 3/1 Everyone I have asked to show me how a dad dances has performed the same actions. These involve wide-spread, low jazz hands, with occasional Saturday Night Fever spasms and a broad, high, glue-stepping knee action.

1582 R. Stanyhurst tr. Virgil First Foure Bookes Æneis iv. 71 Thee Troian famely with wide spread glorye reuiuing.

1627 S. P. L. 41 Divine Odes Englished ix. 13 Well may they in Thee alone, Who know thy wide-spread Name, their trust repose.

1707–8 G. Berkeley Philos. Comm. (1989) 434 The Vast, Wide-spread, Universal Cause of our Mistakes.

1796 J. Thelwall Tribune III. Ep. Ded. p. ii By your debates and resolutions, your wide-spread reports.

1837 T. Carlyle French Revol. I. i. ii. 20 The cardinal symptom of the whole wide-spread malady.

1849 T. B. Macaulay Hist. Eng. I. i. 11 The Danish and Saxon tongues, both dialects of one widespread language, were blended together.

1880 A. R. Wallace Island Life 29 The relics of once widespread types.

1913 R. Lucas Ld. North II. 112 The demand for economical reform was..widespread.

1962 E. Godfrey Retail Selling & Organization i. 6 Price-cutting and the widespread introduction of supermarkets have made competition very difficult to meet.

2012 J. McDougall Media Stud. 62 It became apparent that there was widespread use of phone hacking by tabloid journalists, often seriously unethical and illegal.

1895 Mt. Alexander Mail (Castlemaine, Austral.) 12 July The chagrin so widespreadly felt is intensified by the attendant circumstances.

1916 F. H. Cooper Some Colonial Hist. Beaufort County (Univ. N. Carolina: James Sprunt Hist. Publ.) 37 Right here we are able to account for the origin of what is so widespreadly known as ‘true Southern hospitality’.

1927 Glasgow Herald 31 Oct. 12 To express publicly, wide-spreadly, and emphatically their repudiation of Dr. Barnes's..teaching.

2002 Irish Times (Nexis) 9 Feb. 15 The point of view (admittedly held fairly widespreadly), that no effective Civil Defence action is possible in a future nuclear war.