Word.ws English Dictionary

spread the word

spread the word verb: to tell a lot of people; to inform as many people as one can.

Verb

spread the word (third-person singular simple present spreads the word, present participle spreading the word, simple past and past participle spread the word)

  1. (idiomatic) To tell a lot of people; to inform as many people as one can.
    • His rendition of Herr Barkheimer was so awful that many people thought it to be a drawing of a demon coming to steal their souls. They threw the books into the fire to save themselves, then spread the word not to buy anything printed by Gutenberg.2005, Annabelle du Fouet, “The murky world from whence it all came” (chapter 2), in Weather Balloons Make Rotten Sex Toys, Ellora's Cave, →ISBN, page 46
    • A famous example of viral marketing is the rapid spread of Hotmail as a free email service. Attached to each email was a short advertisement and Hotmail's URL, and customers spread the word about Hotmail simply by emailing their family and friends.2006, Oded Maimon, Lior Rokach, Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery Handbook, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 424

Forms of spread the word

third-person singular presentspreads the word
present participlespreading the word
past participlespread the word
pastspread the word

Questions about spread the word

What does spread the word mean?
Spread the word means to tell a lot of people; to inform as many people as one can.
What part of speech is spread the word?
Spread the word is a verb.
What is the past tense of spread the word?
The past tense of spread the word is spread the word.

Words near spread the word in the dictionary

  1. spread spectrum communications
  2. spread syntax
  3. spread tail
  4. spread tails
  5. spread the bed
  6. spread the word
  7. spread-eagle
  8. spread-eagled
  9. spread-eagleism
  10. spread-eagles
  11. spread-eagling

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spread the word (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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