widening

verb

present participle of widen
as in broadening
to increase the width, breadth, or scope of Immediate action to widen the highway is needed to ease the near constant congestion. The authorities planned to widen their investigation into Ponzi scheme.

Related Words

Relevance

Dissimilar Words

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of widening Thus, Planet 1 slows down and begins to lag behind Planet 2, widening the gap between them. — Phil Plait, Scientific American, 16 Oct. 2026 Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images The spread is widening between AI leaders OpenAI and Anthropic as a sell-off in CoreWeave leads neocloud stocks lower. — Oliver Renick, CNBC, 16 Oct. 2026 The presentation Monday night before the Plano city council revealed that widening some existing roads, adding new turn lanes to others and placing no parking signs in neighborhoods should address concerns about traffic among nearby homeowners. — J.d. Miles, CBS News, 13 Oct. 2026 The appointment comes at a challenging time for the newspaper industry, when audience share is spreading across an ever-widening array of platforms and AI poses new ethical questions. — Staff, Christian Science Monitor, 13 Oct. 2026 Trying to avoid any rush hour traffic during peak times would mean widening roads and removing the charm of SR 434 in Winter Springs. — Orlando Sentinel Staff, The Orlando Sentinel, 13 Oct. 2026 The strikes marked a fresh escalation in the widening Middle East crisis and came shortly after a coalition spokesman urged residents to evacuate the area for their safety. — Fatma Khaled, Los Angeles Times, 13 Oct. 2026 Harnessing his brilliant writing and cinephile’s eye, Bourdain used food as an entry point to understand people and places while widening the aperture of what should be considered great. — Robb Report, 9 Oct. 2026 El Sayed also pointed to the consequences of the widening conflict, including disruptions to global energy supplies. — Barnini Chakraborty, The Washington Examiner, 9 Oct. 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for widening
  1. broadening
  2. expanding
  3. intensifying
Verb
  • The hostilities began as a month-long student movement over school conditions and teacher shortages in working-class suburbs before broadening into a larger protest movement against inequality, public spending cuts and the rising cost of living.
    — Bradford Betz, FOXNews.com, 18 Oct. 2026
  • The spike in core CPI shows price pressures are broadening into other categories beyond energy, experts noted, a sign inflation remains sticky.
    — Mary Cunningham, CBS News, 14 Oct. 2026
Definition of broadening
Verb
  • Note the yellow band—interest on the national debt—which is expanding fast.
    — Jim Edwards, Fortune, 20 Oct. 2026
  • The agreement comes as electricity demand rises across the United States, driven partly by expanding data centers, manufacturing and electrification.
    — Neetika Walter, Interesting Engineering, 20 Oct. 2026
Definition of expanding
Verb
  • The fall was mainly due to worries over artificial intelligence financing and intensifying competition denting sentiment.
    — Lim Hui Jie, CNBC, 13 Oct. 2026
  • An intensifying area of low pressure tracking through Canada will drag a strong cold front across our region Friday.
    — Grant Gilmore, CBS News, 12 Oct. 2026
Definition of intensifying

Browse Nearby Words

widened
widening
widens
See all Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Widening.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/widening. Accessed 20 Oct. 2026.

Copy Citation
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences

More from Merriam-Webster

Word of the Day

Listen to the pronunciation of compunction

See Definitions and Examples »

Popular in Grammar & Usage

See More

'Affect' vs. 'Effect'

Merriam-Webster’s Great Big List of Words You Love to Hate

The Exceptions of '-s' and '-es' Plurals

Is it 'nerve-racking' or 'nerve-wracking'?

What's the difference between 'fascism' and 'socialism'?
See More

Popular in Wordplay

See More

16 Food Words Recently Added to the Dictionary

The Real Origin of 'Supercalifragilistic'

9 Words That Sound Like Insults But Aren't

7 Words for Bad Endings and Rough Situations

Did 'orange' the fruit or the color come first?
See More

Popular

See More

'Affect' vs. 'Effect'

16 Food Words Recently Added to the Dictionary

The Real Origin of 'Supercalifragilistic'
See More

Games & Quizzes

See All
Play Quordle: Guess all four words in a limited number of tries. Each of your guesses must be a real 5-letter word.
Quordle Can you solve 4 words at once?
Play Blossom: Solve today's spelling word game by finding as many words as you can using just 7 letters. Longer words score more points.
Blossom Pick the best words!
Play Missing Letter: a crossword with a twist. Each of the 25 puzzle words start with a different letter of the alphabet. Which letter is missing?
The Missing Letter A daily crossword with a twist
artwork of illustrated limes with the text limes and smile with an arrow connecting the two words
Quiz: Spot the Anagram! Scramble these words to find new words with the e...
See All