bunch
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /bʌntʃ/
ipa: /bʌnʃ/
ipa: /bʌnt͡ʃ/
rhymes: -ʌntʃ
Forms: form: bunches
Etymology: From Middle English bunche, bonche (“hump, swelling”), of uncertain origin.
Perhaps a variant of *bunge (compare dialectal bung (“heap, grape bunch”)), from Proto-Germanic *bunkō, *bunkô, *bungǭ (“heap, crowd”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰenǵʰ-, *bʰénǵʰus (“thick, dense, fat”). Cognates include Saterland Frisian Bunke (“bone”), West Frisian bonke (“bone, lump, bump”), Dutch bonk (“lump, bone”), Low German Bunk (“bone”), German Bunge (“tuber”), Danish bunke (“heap, pile”), Faroese bunki (“heap, pile”); Hittite [Term?] (/⁠panku⁠/, “total, entire”), Tocharian B pkante (“volume, fatness”), Lithuanian búožė (“knob”), Ancient Greek παχύς (pakhús, “thick”), Kamkata-viri břẽć, břez (“berry tree”), Prasuni vuzra (“berry tree”), Sanskrit बहु (bahú, “thick; much”)).
Alternatively, perhaps from a variant or diminutive of bump (compare hump/hunch, lump/lunch, etc.); or from dialectal Old French bonge (“bundle”) (compare French bongeau, bonjeau, bonjot), from West Flemish bondje, diminutive of West Flemish bond (“bundle”).
Senses: examples: text: a bunch of grapes
text: a bunch of bananas
text: a bunch of keys
text: a bunch of yobs on a street corner
text: When we had examined this last find, Lord Godalming and Quincey Morris taking accurate notes of the various addresses of the houses in the East and the South, took with them the keys in a great bunch, and set out to destroy the boxes in these places.
ref: 1897, Bram Stoker, chapter 21, in Dracula:
text: I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn.
ref: 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
text: Why do we sometimes find three buses on the same route arriving together at a bus stop? What is the explanation of bunching? […] Meanwhile there are other buses following on the same route. The 600-yard interval between the second and third bus is decreased by every second's delay to the leaders, and before long the third bus has caught up. That is why buses sometimes arrive at the bus stop in bunches.
ref: 1949 July and August, Railway Magazine, page vii, advertisement by London Transport:
glosses: A group of similar things, either growing together, or in a cluster or clump, usually fastened together.
topics: cycling
hobbies
lifestyle
sports
glosses: The peloton; the main group of riders formed during a race.
examples: text: He still hangs out with the same bunch.
text: “I don't mean all of your friends—only a small proportion—which, however, connects your circle with that deadly, idle, brainless bunch—the insolent chatterers at the opera, the gorged dowagers,[…], the jewelled animals whose moral code is the code of the barnyard—!"
ref: 1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter VI, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:
glosses: An informal body of friends.
examples: text: a bunch of trouble
glosses: A considerable amount.
examples: text: A bunch of them went down to the field.
glosses: An unmentioned amount; a number.
topics: business
forestry
glosses: A group of logs tied together for skidding.
examples: text: The ore may be disseminated throughout the matrix in minute particles, as gold in quartz; in parallel threads, strings, and plates, as with copper; in irregular pockets or bunches
ref: 1874, David Page, Economic Geology: Or, Geology in Its Relations to the Arts and Manufactures:
topics: business
geography
geology
mining
natural-sciences
glosses: An unusual concentration of ore in a lode or a small, discontinuous occurrence or patch of ore in the wallrock.
topics: business
manufacturing
textiles
glosses: The reserve yarn on the filling bobbin to allow continuous weaving between the time of indication from the midget feeler until a new bobbin is put in the shuttle.
examples: text: Two to four filler leaves are laid end to end and rolled into the two halves of the binder leaves, making up what is called the bunch.
topics: lifestyle
smoking
glosses: An unfinished cigar, before the wrapper leaf is added.
examples: text: They will carry[…]their treasures upon the bunches of camels.
ref: 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Isaiah 30:6:
glosses: A protuberance; a hunch; a knob or lump; a hump.
topics: arts
crafts
glassblowing
hobbies
lifestyle
glosses: A seventeenth-century unit of Rhenish glass, 60 of which constitute a way or web.
Synonyms: sense: group of similar things
word: cluster
sense: group of similar things
word: group
sense: informal body of friends
word: pack
sense: informal body of friends
word: group
sense: informal body of friends
word: gang
sense: informal body of friends
word: circle
sense: unusual concentration of ore
word: ore pocket
sense: unusual concentration of ore
word: pocket
sense: unusual concentration of ore
word: pocket of ore
sense: unusual concentration of ore
word: kidney
sense: unusual concentration of ore
word: nest
sense: unusual concentration of ore
word: nest of ore
sense: unusual concentration of ore
word: ore bunch
sense: unusual concentration of ore
word: bunch of ore
Derived terms: word: best of the bunch
word: bluebunch
english: bunch of
translation: bunch of
word: buncha
word: bunchberry
word: bunchflower
word: bunchgrass
word: bunch grass
word: bunchlet
word: bunch of fives
word: bunch pink
word: bunchy
word: get one's panties in a bunch
word: honeybunch
word: kissing-bunch
word: microbunch
word: nanobunch
word: one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch
word: thanks a bunch
word: Willow Bunch