broadside

broad +‎ side

broadside (plural broadsides)

1. (nautical) One side of a ship above the water line; all the guns on one side of a warship; their simultaneous firing.
   • 2007 September 25, Bungie, Halo 3, spoken by Rtas 'Vadum (Robert Davi), Microsoft Game Studios, Xbox 360, level/area: The Ark:

     Broadside! What fools to face our guns!

2. (by extension) A forceful attack, be it written or spoken.
   • 1993, Peter Kolchin, American Slavery (Penguin History, paperback edition, 34)

     Although slaveholders managed - through a combination of political compromise and ideological broadside - to contain the threat of a major anti-slavery compaign by fellow Southerners, planters could never be totally sure of non-slaveholders' loyalty to the social order.

   • 2013 January 3, Luke Harding, Uki Goni, The Guardian‎:

     Fernández's diplomatic broadside follows the British government's decision last month to name a large frozen chunk of Antarctica after the Queen – a gesture viewed in Buenos Aires as provocative.

   • 2022 December 14, Mel Holley, “Network News: Strikes go on as RMT rejects RDG's "detrimental" offer”, in RAIL, number 972, page 9:

     He delivered a broadside to the RMT leadership, saying: "This response to a significantly enhanced offer exposes their true priority - using the British public and NR workers as pawns in a fight with the Government.

3. A large sheet of paper, printed on one side and folded.
4. The printed lyrics of a folk song or ballad; a broadsheet.

• broadside ironclad
• broadside on

broadside (not comparable)

1. Sideways; with the side turned to the direction of some object.
   • 1964 June, Cecil J. Allen, “Locomotive Running Past and Present”, in Modern Railways, page 388:

     [...] the slight fluctuations [in speed] were due to a strong side-wind, which caught the train broadside along exposed stretches of the line.

   • 1977-1980, Lou Sullivan, personal diary, quoted in 2019, Ellis Martin, Zach Ozma (editors), We Both Laughed In Pleasure

     They were going some 60-80 mph [on a motorcycle] down a 30 mph street, hit a car broadside & Pat pushed against Bert, who was crushed into the side of the car.

broadside (third-person singular simple present broadsides, present participle broadsiding, simple past and past participle broadsided)

1. (transitive) To collide with something side-on.

• “broadside”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “broadside”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “broadside”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

• sideboard