umfangreiche

Umfangreiche is the attributive inflected form of the German adjective umfangreich, meaning extensive, wide-ranging, or comprehensive. It is used before a noun to express breadth of scope, volume, or content. The exact ending of the form depends on gender, number, and the determiner used with the noun.

In practice, umfangreiche appears in phrases such as eine umfangreiche Sammlung (feminine singular, indefinite article), umfangreiche Informationen (plural, no article), or der umfangreiche Bericht (masculine singular, definite article). The form can also occur in the plural with a definite article as die umfangreichen Berichte. German adjective declension rules determine the precise ending, but umfangreiche consistently conveys a sense of substantial breadth or quantity.

Etymology and nuance: the word combines Umfang (extent, scope) and reich (rich, full), yielding a term that emphasizes volume or breadth rather than total completeness. It is closely related to synonyms like umfassend (comprehensive) and weitreichend (far-reaching), but with subtle shades of meaning: umfangreich often highlights large size or amount, whereas umfassend stresses thorough coverage and completeness, and weitreichend stresses influence across many areas.

Usage context: umfangreiche is common in academic, journalistic, administrative, and business language. It frequently appears to describe collections, datasets, reports, bibliographies, or knowledge bases, as in umfangreiche Datenmengen or eine umfangreiche Prüfung.