Meaning & use
broaden the horizon
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Meanings
phraseidiom
to gain new knowledge and experience, especially by meeting different people or visiting new places
Grammar: Used as a whole phrase; a possessive word normally comes before 'horizons': broaden your horizons.
Patterns
- broaden someone's horizons
- broaden your horizons by doing something
- broaden the horizons of someone
She took a summer job abroad because she wanted to broaden her horizons.
Reading travel writing broadened my horizons long before I could afford to travel.
Studying with classmates from other countries really broadened his horizons.
phraseidiom
to make a group, subject, or activity include a wider range of people or ideas
Grammar: Here the phrase takes an object naming the thing that becomes wider: broaden the horizons of the course.
Patterns
- broaden the horizons of something
- broaden the horizons of an organization
The new syllabus broadens the horizons of the whole program.
Hiring staff from different backgrounds broadened the horizons of the company.
Common combinations
- broaden your horizons
- A year of volunteering can really broaden your horizons.
- broaden someone's horizons
- Her first trip overseas broadened her horizons enormously.
- a chance to broaden your horizons
- The exchange program is a chance to broaden your horizons.
- broaden the horizons of students
- The school aims to broaden the horizons of students from small towns.
- travel broadens the mind
- My grandmother always said that travel broadens the mind.
Synonyms and how they differ
- widen your experience
- More literal and less idiomatic; it focuses on gaining experience rather than on changing how you see the world.
- expand your outlook
- Close in meaning, but 'outlook' points to your attitude or way of thinking rather than to the range of things you know.
- see the world
- Informal and narrower: it usually means traveling, not learning from new people or ideas.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: broaden the horizon or expand your horizons? broaden the horizon or broaden the mind?
broaden the horizon vs expand your horizons
This is also correct and very common, and it emphasizes growth in size or range; 'broaden' suggests making something wider in scope, so both work, but 'broaden your horizons' is the fixed idiom.
broaden the horizon vs broaden the mind
Similar idea but not the same phrase: 'broaden the mind' means to make someone more open to new ideas, without the travel-and-experience image of 'horizons'.
Practice
Which sentence uses the idiom correctly?
Choose one answer.
The fixed idiom uses the plural 'horizons' with a possessive word like 'her', so option 1 is right. Option 2 uses the singular, which is not the usual form of the idiom; options 3 and 4 place the possessive wrongly.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “broaden the horizon”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.