widened
- 1Simple past and past participle of widen.
Engineers widened the highway to ease the heavy traffic.
The gap between the two leading teams had widened by halftime.
Note
One regular -ed form does the work of both the past tense and the participle, so only context tells them apart. Because widen runs both ways, the participle fits two kinds of clause: intransitive after have (the gap had widened), and transitive in the passive (the road was widened, the sleeves were widened). Programmers use the passive too, for a value widened to a type that can hold more distinct values.
The sleeves were widened so the jacket would fit him again.
The integer is widened to a larger type before the division is carried out.
widened is a form of widen
widen, verb: To make something wider or broader than it was. Full entry
- Spelling
- widen → widened: add -ed
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /d/.
Use it in a sentence
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