Word.ws English Dictionary

broad in the beam

broad in the beam adjective: wide across the hull.

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

Forms of broad in the beam

alternative formbroad across the beam
alternative formbroad-beamed

Questions about broad in the beam

What does broad in the beam mean?
Broad in the beam means wide across the hull.
What part of speech is broad in the beam?
Broad in the beam is an adjective.

Words near broad in the beam in the dictionary

  1. broad gauge
  2. broad gauges
  3. Broad Green
  4. Broad Haven
  5. broad hints
  6. broad in the beam
  7. broad jump
  8. broad ligament
  9. broad ligaments
  10. broad mite
  11. broad mites

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-broad in the beam.ogg.

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