broad adj.
1. knowing, alert, ‘on the ball’; if not actually criminal then willing and able to bend any rule.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | (con. 1840s–50s) London Labour and London Poor III 138/1: At fairs we make our talk rather broad, to suit the audience. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Susan Lenox I 213: Tempest told a story that was ‘broad’. While the others laughed, Susan gazed at him with a puzzled expression. |
2. (W.I.) physically large; socially important.
![[WI]](/static/img/flags/wi.png "West Indies") | Official Dancehall Dict. 6: Broad massive; big; influential: u. de man broad, star/he is influential. |
SE in slang uses
In compounds
having wide hips.
| DSUE (1984) 137/2: late C.19-20. |
1. a Quaker; thus broad-brimmed, sedate.
| [ | | Humours of a Coffee-House 3 Oct. 30: Pray, let’s have done with all things that relate to Religion [...] I must confess the World is now grown so Devoutly Captious, that it is almost Blasphemy to say a Man looks like a Knave that has a Broad-Brimm’d Hat on]. |
| Tom Jones (1959) 218: This the Quaker had observed, and this, added to his behaviour, inspired honest Broadbrim with a conceit, that his companion was, in reality, out of his senses. | |
| Devil Upon Two Sticks in Works (1799) II 271: fingersee: But here Dr Melchisedech Broadbrim, however. [...] broadbrim: Forasmuch as not one of my brethren can be more zealous than I —. | |
| Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 483: Therefore the broad-brims for the knave,/ Upon this hillock dug a grave. | |
| ‘The Battle of Brooklyn’ in Satiric Comedies (1969) 93: I hope you wont leave one broad-brim on the continent. | |
![[Ind]](/static/img/flags/ind.png "India") | Hicky’s Bengal Gaz. 21-28 Apr. n.p: That Crop’d eard Apostle in Embrio [...] Obadiah Broad-brim. | |
| Honest Fellow 92: The next appeared was a quaker so prim, / With his primitive face, and a very broad brim. | |
| Sporting Mag. Dec. XXV 159/1: An honest broad-brimmed quaker [etc.]. | |
| ‘A Sup of good Whisky’ in Jovial Songster 136: The Quakers will bid you from drink abstain [...] Yet some of the broadbrims will get to the stuff, / And tipple away till they’ve tippled enough. | |
| Spectator 276: Broadbrim is used as the name of a Quaker correspondent [F&H]. | |
| Satirist (London) 27 Jan. 451/3: Petitions are ready [...] conveying the hopes and wishes of the broad brim community, that one drab coat at least may be allowed to put in a ‘yea’ and ‘nay’. | |
| Japhet 256: Is it possible Japhet [...] that I find you a broad-brimmed Quaker? | |
| Crim. Con. Gaz. 25 Aug. 2/3: ‘Halloa you quaker, how are you, old broadbrim?’. | |
| ‘Uncle Sam’s Peculiarities’ in Bentley’s Misc. IV 48: Philadelphia had attracted none but the real Simon Pures, Obadiah Broadbrims, and Grey Susannahs. | |
| ‘Friend in Need’ Works (1862) V 2791: I’m up to a thing or two, and know the time of day. Broad-brims be hanged! [...] If I’ll be a Quaker any longer, call me pump, and hang an iron ladle to my nose. | |
| Stray Subjects (1848) 58: It was now the turn of the Quaker gentleman to smile [...] But our benevolent friend in the broad brim, was careless – he was! | |
| Era (London) 1 Sept. 8/3: Alongside [...] swagger a streak of Broadbrims, who are daily sellers of guns to shoot Christians, because they turn the penny — but whose honest, hard working hands have never been seen at the plough [...] or any honest active handicraft. | |
| Manchester Spy (NH) 5 Oct. n.p.: Paddy, attending a ‘broad-brim’ convention for the first time [etc]’. | |
| Season Ticket 288: He was a Quaker ashore then. [...] I can’t say I pitied old Broadbrim much either. | |
 | One of the Six Hundred i: The sly broad-brim, and popularity-hunters of the Peace Society sent a deputation to the Emperor Nicholas [F&H]. | |
| Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 2 Oct. 7/1: [headline] a quaker can-can / Old Broadbrim’s Batter. | |
| ‘’Arry on ’Ome Rule’ in Punch 17 July in (2006) 121: Old Johnny Broadbrim hisself. |
2. a quiet, sedate old man, irrespective of religion.
| Sl. Dict. 97: Broad-Brim originally applied to a Quaker only; but now used in reference to all quiet, sedate, respectable old men. |
3. (US) a Mennonite (a religion affianced to the earlier Anabaptists).
| Whiplash River [ebook] ‘I rthought you weren’t a Mennonite’ [...] ‘When the cops come round I am [...] The real broad-brims in town, the buggy humpers, they don’t mind’. |
a person of wide tastes and interests.
| in Punch 12 Jan. 51/1: [title] Ballads for Broad-brows. | |
| King who was King i. §2. 22: The Broadbrow is as anxious not to be ‘arty’ as the Low-brow and as terrified of the cheap and obvious as the High-brow [OED]. |
a woman with wide hips.
| Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era. |
In phrases
fat, overweight, esp. around the hips and buttocks.
| [ | | Spirit of the Times (N.Y.) 20 Feb. 7: [This Ned Curtis had a wife, a strapping craft, broad in the beam, with a high starn [sic] and very bluff in the bows] . |
| Pippins and Pies 102: It was no easy matter, though, to crush Miss Flathers—who was what sailors call ‘broad in the beam’. | |
| Vancouver Indep. (WA) 8 Sept. 2/5: If she is a little stout they say she is ‘broad in the beam’. | |
| Vocabula Amatoria (1966) 29: ballon (avoir du). To be well-hipped; ‘to be broad in the beam’. | |
| Oasis (Arizola, AZ) 16 Nov. 8/2: The woman was so broad in the beam and her arms were so chubby. | |
| Hawaiian Star (Honolulu, HI) 17 May 12/2: Son Bill passed the six-foot mark [...] He was also broad in the beam and when he entered Columbia College [...] few Sophs there were who cared to tackle him. | |
| Eve. World (NY) 13 Sept. 6/2: An aquatic lady known as High-Powered Maggie, squat in build and broad in the beam. | |
| in Limerick (1953) 31: There once was a lady of Crete / So enormously broad in the beam. | |
| Sexus (1969) 118: She was about the homeliest woman I’ve ever seen, broad in the beam. |