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 -TH.]
1. 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. Shaks., 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. Shaks., 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 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. Chr. 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. Shaks., John, IV. ii. 99. That blood which ow’d the bredth of all this Ile, Three foot of it doth hold. Ibid. (1601), All’s Well, III. ii. 26. If there bee bredth enough in the world, I will hold a long distance. Ibid. (1608), Per., IV. i. 37. He will repent the breadth of his great voyage.
4. fig. 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.
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 sb. pl., ‘timbers placed nearly in the broadest part of the ship … so as to strengthen two or more timbers’ (Adm. Smyth).
