broadcast
Pluralbroadcasts
Verbbroadcasts, broadcasting, broadcast
Pluralbroadcasts
Formsbroadcasts, broadcasting, broadcast
- 1A radio or television program transmitted so that anyone with a suitable receiver can pick it up.
The live broadcast was interrupted by a sudden technical fault.
Millions tuned in to the broadcast of the championship final.
Similartransmission, telecast
- 2To use radio waves or other electronic means to send a message or signal.
The network broadcasts its flagship program every weeknight.
Engineers broadcast the test signal across the new tower's range.
Oppositenarrowcast
Note
The past tense and past participle are both plain broadcast, just like cast, the verb inside the word: the local station had broadcast it in the afternoon news. Broadcasted does turn up, even in print, but it is widely treated as an error, and careful writers avoid it. The same rule holds for every verb use, radio and farming alike.
- 3A program (such as a bulletin, documentary, or show) sent out by radio or television transmission.
The late-night broadcast featured an interview with the mayor.
Critics praised the new documentary broadcast for its honesty.
Oppositenarrowcast
Note
Its opposite is narrowcast, a program aimed at a select audience rather than everyone in range. This noun is countable, as in a first national broadcast or we interrupt this broadcast. The transmission sense can also be uncountable, as in nearly 40 years of continuous broadcast.
- 4Sent or communicated to many people through radio waves or electronic means.
The broadcast appeal raised funds within hours.
Officials relied on broadcast alerts to reach distant villages.
- 5Having to do with the transmission of messages or signals to many people by radio waves or electronic means.
The company invested heavily in new broadcast equipment.
Broadcast regulations limit how much advertising a channel may air.
Note
Here the word works only before a noun: broadcast licensee, broadcast station, broadcast equipment. It classifies rather than describes. A broadcast licensee holds the right to transmit, but nothing about the licensee was itself sent out. That test separates it from the "transmitted" adjective, where a broadcast appeal is the very thing that went out over the air.
- 6To perform, present, or speak on a radio or television show.
The veteran journalist broadcasts nightly to a national audience.
Two presenters broadcast together from the conference floor.
Note
Here the speaker, not the program, is the subject, and the verb takes no object: she broadcasts nightly, or two presenters broadcast from the conference floor. Compare the transmitting verb, where a station broadcasts a program. Françoise Dolto, for instance, broadcast on France-Inter for twelve minutes every weekday for two years, answering parents' questions.
- 7
- 8Scattered or cast widely in all directions.
Broadcast ash from the eruption settled across three counties.
The broadcast remnants of the parade littered the avenue.
Similarscattered
Note
The farming picture behind every other use: broad plus cast, the sower flinging seed across a field instead of drilling it into rows. The seed was broadcast, not drilled. By 1931 M. A. Mattoon could write of broadcast methods of public education, stretching the image from grain to ideas. That same stretch makes sense of the radio meaning.
- 9Widely and in all directions; over a wide area.
The explosion sent debris broadcast across the field.
Rumors spread broadcast through the town within hours.
Similarwidely
Note
An adverb of motion that follows verbs of sending and scattering. Soldiers are turned loose to wander broadcast over the country, and a warning is sent broadcast to newspapers. It needs no -ly ending, because broadcast does the adverb's work on its own, much as abroad does. Put it after the verb and the scattering reads naturally.
- 10To use a single transmission to send an email to multiple recipients, usually a large group.
The HR team broadcasts the newsletter to thousands of subscribers each month.
They broadcast the survey link to all members in one message.
Similarsend, circulate, distribute
Less common meanings
- 11To sow seeds by scattering them over a wide area.
The sower would broadcast grain evenly across the plowed earth.
I wanted to grow my own cut flowers for the big day so three months earlier I broadcasted an annual seed mix across a few recently cleared borders.
2013, Sarah Price, “Breathing new life into an old garden [print edition: New life, old garden]”Note
Older than any radio use, the farming verb takes the seed as its object. Thomas Boothby Parkyns in 1789 says seed may be sown in rows, or broadcast. The verb survives in garden writing: in 2013 Sarah Price describes scattering an annual seed mix across cleared borders. Its past form follows the transmitting verb, plain broadcast, though Price herself writes broadcasted.
- 12The act of scattering seed by hand, or a crop grown from seed sown by scattering.
The even broadcast of the seed mattered more than the quantity used.
Since my laſt, I went to ſee a piece of Daniel Fitch's, of Pluckley, Kent. He has two acres of broadcaſt, the oldeſt I have ever ſeen, ſown twenty years ago with barley, like clover.
1785, W. Belcher, “Observations on Lucerne”Note
Old husbandry used the noun in two ways that are easy to confuse. It can name a method, as when barley is sown with a broadcast at two sowings. It can also name a field of plants raised that way: W. Belcher in 1785 saw two acres of broadcast sown twenty years before. Read the context. A broadcast you can measure in acres is a crop, not an action.
- 13In the manner of having seeds scattered widely over an area rather than set in rows.
The grass seed was sown broadcast over the bare slope.
When [rape is] grown broadcast the superphosphate may be incorporated with the surface soil by the harrow when preparing the ground for the seed or in covering the same.
1893, Thomas Shaw, “Fertilizers for Rape”Note
A farmer's adverb that tells how a crop was raised: grown broadcast or sown broadcast, as opposed to sown in drills. Thomas Shaw, writing on rape in 1893, uses it this way when advising how to work fertilizer into the soil. It belongs to old husbandry, and a modern writer would more naturally say the seed was scattered.
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Practice
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Origin
Formed from 'broad' + 'cast', the word was first attested in the mid 18th century in an agricultural sense, meaning to scatter seeds widely.