widely

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

• IPA^(key): /ˈwaɪdli/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aɪdli

widely (comparative widelier or more widely, superlative wideliest or most widely)

1. In a wide manner; across a wide area.
2. (figurative) Commonly; generally; to a great degree.
   • 1948, Carey McWilliams, North from Mexico / The Spanish-Speaking People of The United States, J. B. Lippincott Company, page 75:

     In 1866 Colonel J. F. Meline noted that the rebozo had almost disappeared in Santa Fe and that hoop skirts, on sale in the stores, were being widely used.

   • 2011 December 19, Kerry Brown, “Kim Jong-il obituary”, in The Guardian‎:

     Kim Jong-il, who has died aged 69, was the general secretary of the Workers party of Korea, and head of the military in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). He was one of the most reclusive and widely condemned national leaders of the late 20th and early 21st century, leaving his country diplomatically isolated, economically broken and divided from South Korea.

   • 2014 October 14, David Malcolm, “The Great War Re-Remembered: Allohistory and Allohistorical Fiction”, in Martin Löschnigg, Marzena Sokolowska-Paryz, editors, The Great War in Post-Memory Literature and Film‎, Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG., →ISBN, page 173:

     Demandt discusses a German example, Ferdinand Grautoff's 1906. Der Zusammenbuch der Alten Welt (1905) (cf. Es hätte auch... 195-196). Thus, a war widely predicted in fiction is only exiguously remembered in post factum allohistorical narratives.

• Wildey, dewily, wieldy