v. [f. BROAD a. + -EN1. Johnson says ‘I know not whether this word occurs, but in the following passage,’ viz. that from Thomson in sense 1. But the same author had used broadened in the trans. sense.]
1. intr. To become broad or broader; to widen.
1727. Thomson, Summer, 1600. Low walks the sun, and broadens by degrees, Just o’er the verge of day.
1824. Byron, Juan, XVI. lxxxviii. Smiles around Broadening to grins.
1832. Tennyson, ‘You ask me why,’ iii. Where Freedom broadens slowly down From precedent to precedent.
2. trans. To make broad or broader; to widen, dilate. lit. and fig.
1726. [see BROADENED].
1792. Roberts, Looker-on (1794), I. 321. A constitution … so broadened, by experience, to the compass of our wants and the demands of our nature.
1861. Beresf. Hope, Eng. Cathedr. 19th C., vi. 214. For this object the nave should be proportionably broadened.
1867. in E. B. Denison, Life Bp. Lonsdale (1868), 240. He was a High Churchman of the old school, broadened by experience.
1871. Blackie, Four Phases, i. 74. To broaden his conception of morality and religion.
