Word.ws English Dictionary

broad across the beam

broad across the beam is the alternative form of broad in the beam.

Meaning of broad in the beam

Adjective

broad in the beam

  1. Wide across the hull.
    • Ah! She's not that old green launch with a yellow line, very broad in the beam?1890 February, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “The Baker Street Irregulars”, in The Sign of Four (Standard Library), London: Spencer Blackett […], →OCLC, page 145
  2. (idiomatic, especially a female) Wide across the hips, with large buttocks.
    • [T]he women of Falesa are a handsome lot to see. If they have a fault, they are a trifle broad in the beam.1905, Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter 1, in Island Nights' Entertainments

Questions about broad across the beam

What is broad across the beam the alternative form of?
Broad across the beam is the alternative form of broad in the beam.

Words near broad across the beam in the dictionary

  1. broaching
  2. broaching to
  3. broacht
  4. broad
  5. broad acres
  6. broad across the beam
  7. broad and shallow
  8. broad antigen
  9. broad antigens
  10. broad arrow
  11. broad arrowhead

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: broad across the beam (page history and authors); broad in the beam (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “broad across the beam.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/broad_across_the_beam. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.