SWATHE

(AREA), swath [noun] [C] - a long strip of a crop or grass that has been cut by a machine, or, more generally, a large area or partThe long grass was cut in swathes.Huge swathes (= areas) of rain forest are being cleared for farming and mining.The fire reduced vast swathes of the city to ruins.A thousand years ago, pandas could be found over a wide swathe of China.The film spreads over a large swathe of time, but concentrates mainly on the late 1940s.(figurative) These people represent a wide swathe (= range) of opinion.