Word.ws English Dictionary

paint with a broad brush

paint with a broad brush verb: to describe a class of objects or a kind of phenomenon in general terms, without specific details and without attention to individual variations.

Verb

paint with a broad brush (third-person singular simple present paints with a broad brush, present participle painting with a broad brush, simple past and past participle painted with a broad brush)

  1. (ambitransitive, idiomatic) To describe a class of objects or a kind of phenomenon in general terms, without specific details and without attention to individual variations.
    • I'm just painting with a broad brush. You fellows fill in the details.1958, H. Boyle, J. House, “Folklore in the News: Businessmen's Bebop”, in Western Folklore, volume 17, number 1, page 63
    • To cover this range of issues is clearly to paint with a broad brush on a global canvas.1981, D. N., “Review of Global Signposts to the 21st Century by John A. Loraine”, in Population and Development Review, volume 7, number 2, page 363

Forms of paint with a broad brush

third-person singular presentpaints with a broad brush
present participlepainting with a broad brush
past participlepainted with a broad brush
pastpainted with a broad brush

Questions about paint with a broad brush

What does paint with a broad brush mean?
Paint with a broad brush means to describe a class of objects or a kind of phenomenon in general terms, without specific details and without attention to individual variations.
What part of speech is paint with a broad brush?
Paint with a broad brush is a verb.
What is the past tense of paint with a broad brush?
The past tense of paint with a broad brush is painted with a broad brush.

Words near paint with a broad brush in the dictionary

  1. paint the town red
  2. paint the wagon
  3. paint thinner
  4. paint thinners
  5. paint up
  6. paint with a broad brush
  7. paint with a wide brush
  8. paint with the same brush
  9. paint-billed crake
  10. paint-billed crakes
  11. paint-by-numbers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: paint with a broad brush (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-paint with a broad brush.ogg.

Cite this entry: “paint with a broad brush.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/paint_with_a_broad_brush. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.