WIDE, adj. A term employed to denote relative extent in certain circumstances, and opposed to narrow and strait.
as, a broad or wide street or ditch, &c.; but with a greater degree of propriety, according to the circumstances of the object, or the idea which we wish to convey. In a street where the houses are low and the boundaries open, or in a ditch of small depth and large superficies, as this largeness of superficies bears the principal proportion, broad would be more proper; but if the houses are of great height, or the ditch of great depth, and capaciousness is the principal property which affects the mind, we would naturally say a wide street or ditch; and the same may be said of all similar cases. But there are some cases in which both these terms are applied, with a greater difference of meaning; thus we say a broad or a wide gate. As the gate, however, is employed to denote either the aperture in the wall, or the matter which closes that aperture, these terms are each of them used to denote that particular quality to which they are generally applied; and as the opening itself can never be considered as a superficies, the term wide, in this case, denotes the distance between the sides of the aperture; whilst, on the contrary, broad denotes the extent of matter fitted to close that aperture; nor can these two terms be in any case substituted for one another.