breadth
(brɛdθ)
Also 6 bredeth(e, bredthe, breth, 6–7 bredth, 7 breadthe.
[A late formation on the earlier breade, brede, by analogy with leng-th, streng-th, etc.: see -th1.]
1. a. Measure or distance from side to side of a surface; width, extent across. Also fig.
| 1523 Act 14 & 15 Hen. VIII, vi, One other way..of as greate largeness in bredeth or larger than the said olde way. 1570 Billingsley Euclid i. def. 2 A line is length without breadth. 1599 Shakes. Much Ado v. i. 11 Measure his woe the length and bredth of mine. 1653 Holcroft Procopius ii. 41 A rock stretching far in bredth. 1742 Richardson Pamela III. 118 Let the World go as it will, we shall have our Length and our Breadth at last. 1870 F. Wilson Ch. Lindisf. 79 The breadth, across the transepts, is 54 feet. |
b. to a hair's breadth: with minute exactness of measure, to a nicety. Cf. hair-breadth.
| 1598 Shakes. Merry W. iv. ii. 4, I professe requitall to a haires bredth. 1709 Steele Tatler No. 36 ¶2 Lady Autumn knows to an Hair's Breadth where her Place is in all Assemblies and Conversations. |
2. a. A piece (of cloth, etc.) of the full breadth, without reference to its length; a width.
| 1584 Inv. in Scott Kenilw. Notes, A fayre quilte of crymson sattin vj breadths. 1673 Grew Anat. Roots iv. §19. 73 The several Plates or Bredths of a Floor-Mat. 1743 R. Maxwell Sel. Trans. 398 (Jam.) The number of biers or scores of threads in the breadth of the said cloth. 1874 C. Rossetti Sp. Likenesses 50 These breadths must be run together, three and three. |
b. An extent or area as measured by its breadth: the length not being expressly considered.
| 1601 Holland Pliny I. 119 Cause it to inlarge it selfe into a bredth on the left hand as far as to the riuer Cyrus. 1813 Examiner 4 Jan. 6/1 Large breadths of lands..are left unsown. 1864 Realm 29 June 4 Only a given breadth can yearly be sown with grain crops. 1876 Geo. Eliot Dan. Der. i. iii. 13 Green breadths of undulating park. |
3. Extent, distance in general, length.
| 1595 Shakes. John iv. ii. 99 That blood which ow'd the bredth of all this Ile, Three foot of it doth hold. 1601 ― All's Well iii. ii. 26 If there bee bredth enough in the world, I will hold a long distance. 1608 ― Per. iv. i. 37 He will repent the breadth of his great voyage. |
4. fig. a. Largeness (of mind, sentiment, or view), liberality, catholicity; also, wide or broad display of a quality.
| 1847 Grote Greece (1862) III. xxviii. 45 Breadth of common sentiment and sympathy between Greek and Greek. 1852 Trevelyan Life Macaulay (1876) I. vi. 391 The press found occasion to attack Macaulay with a breadth and ferocity of calumny. 1878 Morley Condorcet 75 Turgot shows a breadth and accuracy of vision. |
b. Undue freedom or lack of decorum in dealing with indelicate matters; grossness or licence of expression. (Cf. broad a. 6 c, broadness 2.)
| 1873 W. C. Hazlitt Feudal Period Pref. p. ix, A few of them exhibit a breadth which is scarcely consonant with modern ideas of decorum. |
5. Art. A broad effect: see quots.
| 1788 Sir J. Reynolds Disc. (1876) 84 A greater breadth and uniformity of colour. c 1811 Fuseli Lect. Art v. (1848) 465 Breadth, or that quality of execution which makes a whole so predominate over the parts as to excite the idea of uninterrupted unity amid the greatest variety..is a judicious display of fulness, not a substitute of vacuity. 1857 Ruskin Elem. Drawing 311 Good composers are always associating their colours in great groups..and securing..what they call ‘breadth’, that is to say a large gathering of each kind of thing into one place; light being gathered to light, darkness to darkness, and colour to colour. 1885 Athenæum 30 May 700/3 Simplicity, harmony, and breadth combine in these pictures with a restfulness which is truly admirable. |
6. Comb. (Naut.), as breadth-line, ‘a curved line of the ship lengthwise, intersecting the timbers at their respective broadest parts’ (Weale); breadth-riders n. pl., ‘timbers placed nearly in the broadest part of the ship{ddd}so as to strengthen two or more timbers’ (Adm. Smyth).