Read along with the three podcasts, or open the full dictionary entry for Broadcast for the definition, Arabic meaning, synonyms and example sentences.
Narrator: Today's word is "broadcast" — pronounced /ˈbrɔːdkɑːst/, with the stress on "broad" — a verb, noun, and adjective.
Narrator: To broadcast is to transmit to a wide audience — by radio, television, or internet; the noun is the programme itself.
Narrator: In plain English, broadcasting is one voice reaching many ears at once — the evening news, the live match, the royal wedding.
Narrator: Its origin is wonderfully agricultural — to broadcast was to sow seed by hand, scattered broadly across the field: broad plus cast, widely thrown.
Narrator: When radio arrived in the 1920s, engineers borrowed the farmer's word — signals scattered across the countryside like seed.
Narrator: Grammar note — the past tense is simply "broadcast": the show broadcast last night; like "cast" itself, it never takes -ed in careful usage.
Narrator: Figuratively, to broadcast is to tell everyone — "don't broadcast it!" begs discretion.
Narrator: Technology kept it busy — networks broadcast packets, phones broadcast signals, and anyone with a phone can now broadcast live.
Narrator: So remember: broadcast is seed thrown wide — one hand, one message, scattered to the whole field.
Speaker A: Family history moment — my grandad told me that in his village, "broadcasting" meant sowing seed by hand! I assumed he was teasing me.
Speaker B: He was teaching you! That's the word's true origin — broad plus cast, seed thrown widely across the field. Radio borrowed it from the farmers in the 1920s.
Speaker A: So the BBC is technically scattering seed! And now we broadcast everything — shows, matches, even my neighbour's live gardening videos.
Speaker B: The great democratisation — once you needed a transmission tower; now a phone broadcasts live to the world. Verb, noun, and adjective too — a broadcast, broadcast quality.
Speaker A: And people use it for gossip — my aunt says "well don't broadcast it" before telling the entire street herself!
Speaker B: Ha! The figurative sense — to broadcast is to tell everyone at once. Your aunt is a one-woman transmission tower.
Speaker A: Regional coverage guaranteed! Now the grammar question — is it "broadcast" or "broadcasted" in the past?
Speaker B: The famous one — careful usage says "broadcast", unchanged: "the match broadcast live yesterday". Like cast, cost, and cut — verbs that refuse -ed.
Speaker A: So "broadcasted" is wrong?
Speaker B: Traditionally frowned upon, though you'll hear it increasingly — that battle deserves its own episode! Stick with "broadcast" and no editor will ever wince.
Speaker A: Noted and filed! Close synonyms — "transmit", "air", "stream"?
Speaker B: The airwave family — "transmit" is the engineer's word, "air" the listing's, "stream" the internet's. "Broadcast" remains the grand original — seed, signal, and story, thrown wide.
Speaker B: Let's use "broadcast" in AI prompts — a genuine technical term: systems broadcast messages, events, and updates to many listeners at once.
Speaker A: So broadcast in a prompt means one-to-many delivery?
Speaker B: Exactly. For real-time features, you'd write:
Prompt: Add live broadcast updates to my dashboard — when data changes on the server, broadcast the update to every open browser instantly, no refresh needed. One change, all screens, so every viewer sees the same truth.
Speaker B: The word "broadcast" names the exact pattern — one sender, all receivers.
Speaker A: The seed scattered to every screen! What about announcements?
Speaker B: Try this:
Prompt: Build a broadcast announcement tool for my app — admins write one message and broadcast it to all users as a dismissible banner, with scheduling and an audience filter. One composer, whole field reached, so news lands everywhere at once.
Speaker A: So the admin becomes the transmission tower.
Speaker B: With a schedule button. For chat systems:
Prompt: Add broadcast channels to my chat app — read-only channels where only owners post and every member receives, separate from normal group chats. Clear one-way lanes, so announcements never drown in replies.
Speaker A: What about live events?
Speaker B: Here you go:
Prompt: Create a live broadcast page for my event site — a stream embed, a live viewer count, and a replay link that appears the moment the broadcast ends. Before, during, and after states, so the page works all day.
Speaker A: Could broadcast warn about oversharing too?
Speaker B: The privacy flip:
Prompt: Audit my app for accidental broadcasts — actions that notify everyone when they should notify a few, like profile edits pinging all followers. List each over-broadcast with a narrower fix, so users never shout by mistake.
Speaker A: So "broadcast" powers live updates, announcements, channels — and checks the volume.
Speaker B: Exactly — the thrown-wide word, from the seed field to the server.
Broadcast — meaning in Arabic & definition More B courses GL Dictionary