broadcast

adj

1. Cast or scattered widely in all directions; cast abroad.

   “The seed was broadcast, not drilled.”

   “They alleged that, as soon as the Opium Commission was appointed, the various anti-opium organisations began to be extremely active and a determined campaign was carried on against the use of the drug by the circulation of a mass of anti-opium literature and the broadcast distribution of handbills and pamphlets.”

   “There must be action on and participation in broadcast methods of public education, face to face, in groups, or by use of the mails. This, however, is of secondary importance to the man-to-man job of education in care with fire in the woods.”

2. Communicated, signalled, or transmitted to many people, through radio waves or electronic means.

   “For radio-transmission it has been found that certain passages of a rhythmical nature come out more clearly if wooden-headed sticks are used. The Timpani sometimes tend to sound blurred and even to have a blurring effect on the rest of the orchestral ensemble in broadcast music, when ordinary soft sticks are used in a strongly marked rhythm.”

3. (attributive)Relating to transmissions of messages or signals to many people through radio waves or electronic means.

   “The new limitations would still prohibit foreigners from wholly or directly owning broadcast licensees, allowing only indirect ownership through a stake in a controlling parent of a broadcast licensee.”

adv

1. Widely in all directions; abroad.

   “[O]n reporting to Captain Thrasher he informed me that his orders were to take a detachment of forty men across the French Broad River and turn them loose to wander broadcast over the country as a protection to foraging parties of quartermasters and commissaries, […]”

   “The commercial traveller, a personage unknown to antiquity, is one of the striking figures created by the manners and customs of our present epoch. […] Our century will bind the realm of isolated power, abounding as it does in creative genius, to the realm of universal but levelling might; equalizing all products, spreading them broadcast among the masses, and being itself controlled by the principle of unity,—the final expression of all societies.”

   “A special letter of warning against the ravages of the potato-tuber moth in the shape of a press notice has been sent broadcast to newspapers, as well as to others, throughout the country.”

2. (archaic)By having its seeds sown over a wide area.

   “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.”

noun

1. A transmission of a radio or television programme intended to be received by anyone with a receiver.

   “No one knows how long it will be until a broadcast from a studio in New York will be viewed in India as well as in Indiana, will be seen in the Congo as it is seen in Chicago. But as surely as we are meeting here today, that day will come; and once again our world will shrink.”

   “After nearly 40 years of continuous broadcast in Hong Kong, a 24-hour transmission of the BBC World Service will go silent in the former British colony, replaced with programming from China's state radio channel. The move by Radio Television Hong Kong, owned by the local government, was meant to "enhance the cultural exchange between the mainland and Hong Kong", a spokesman said.”

2. A programme (bulletin, documentary, show, etc.) so transmitted.

   “The DJ was feeling nervous before his first national broadcast.”

   “We interrupt this broadcast at the request of the police department to bring you the following special bulletin: The dead body of Miss Paula Canfield, missing student at Westlake University and daughter of the multi-millionaire Harold Canfield, has been found in the Arroyo Seco near the Colorado Street Bridge.”

   “Radio Free Europe was established by a group of private citizens in December 1949, for the purpose of conducting a propaganda campaign against six Communist-dominated satellites in central and eastern Europe. […] Its program consisted of daily half-hour broadcasts, first to Czechoslovakia and then to Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Rumania, and Albania.”

3. (archaic)The act of scattering seed; a crop grown from such seed.

   “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.”

   “It was stated by Mr. Miller, that the common method was, formerly, to sow the barley-seed with a broadcast at two sowings; the first being harrowed in once, but the second not until the seed is buried; […]”

verb

1. (transitive)To transmit a message or signal through radio waves or electronic means.

   “When the boys reached the business section of Bayport they found that Jackley's confession had already become known. The local radio station had broadcast it in the afternoon news program and people everywhere were discussing it.”

   “Practicing vocational service to the limit of one's vision makes a difference whether an employer regards his employees as "robots or human beings"; it makes a difference in the kind of advertisements he publishes or broadcasts; it makes a difference how he reacts under pressure from a competitor; it makes a difference in the quality of his service.”

   “The TV is broadcasting a FUZZY PICTURE that shows the weatherman from WVII, the Bango ABC affiliate.”

   “The Royal Shakespeare Company will today become the first theatre in the UK to broadcast Shakespeare direct into schools. A production of Richard II, starring David Tennant in the title role, is going to be streamed free of charge into classrooms up and down the country.”

2. (transitive)To transmit a message over a wide area.

   “However, truth and lies can usually be confirmed or denied by speaking with eyewitnesses of events in order to verify what took place. The amount of time separating the event in question from when it was broadcasted also makes a difference.”

3. (specifically, transitive)To transmit a message over a wide area.

   “Urban legend has it that someone is monitoring all those e-mails broadcast from your work address. Hard to imagine a more boring job but the truth is, and I shouldn't have to tell people this, the record of those e-mails is in a server somewhere and it can be monitored.”

4. (intransitive)To appear as a performer, presenter, or speaker in a broadcast programme.

   “She [Françoise Dolto] is most well known in France for her broadcasts on France-Inter, Lorsque l'enfant parait; she broadcasted for twelve minutes every day of the week for two years, answering parents' questions.”

5. (archaic, transitive)To sow seeds over a wide area.

   “I ſhall content myſelf, […] to ſay that the ſeed ſhoud be ſown in the garden, or very good ground, in rows, or broadcaſt, and as ſoon as the plants are of the ſize of a gooſe-quill, to be tranſplanted in rows of eighteen inches diſtance, and eighteen inches apart, one plant from the other: […]”

   “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.”