with broad strokes

with broad strokes

In general, vague, or non-specific terms, as opposed to in very fine detail. I don't need every detail of the event—just summarize with broad strokes. Describe your idea with broad strokes, just so I can get a sense of it.
See also: broad, stroke
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • broad (brush) strokes
  • broad strokes
  • in broad (brush) strokes
  • down to the last detail
  • detail for
  • detail for (something)
  • geek out
  • geek out about (someone or something)
  • geek out over (someone or something)
  • in and out
References in periodicals archive
College London) necessarily draws with broad strokes as he profiles one of the largest, strongest, and oldest cultures on the planet.
Look, I am painting with broad strokes the definition of stillness, of not searching for anything.
With broad strokes, church historian Mark Noll provides a clear way to approach the question, What is different about North American Christianity because of North America?
Thesps deliver with broad strokes, and the agreeably sinister score by Philippe Rombi is just right.
The author does not overgeneralize with broad strokes in his interpretation to provide a tidy, encompassing analysis; rather, he investigates the particularities, the conflicting evidence, and the fluidity of gender identity as it operated in public and private arenas.
In his charges, Zinn paints with broad strokes and ignores nuances and qualifications that led me to support Bill Bradley on March 7.
It appears at first that Greene covered his panels with broad strokes of gestural underpainting and then laid down the hole-riddled top coats, allowing the openings in the color to randomly expose fragments of the compositions beneath.
In the first three historical portraits (titled Germans, Japanese, and Italians around the world) Sowell describes global historical movements with broad strokes. The opening chapter on Germans emphasizes their superiority over many of the peoples with whom they settled, in Russia as well as in the Western Hemisphere and Australia; it celebrates German capacity for innovation.
My main gripe with his book is that it is painted with broad strokes, which can be frustrating.
Writing with broad strokes, he indicts the institutionalization of intellectual life, the abandonment of universalism in favor of particularism, and the neutering of utopianism.