branch
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: bränch
ipa: /bɹɑːnt͡ʃ/
enpr: brănch
ipa: /bɹænt͡ʃ/
rhymes: -ɑːntʃ
rhymes: -æntʃ
Forms: form: branches
form: braunch
Etymology: From Middle English branche, braunche, bronche, from Old French branche, branke, from Late Latin branca (“footprint”, later also “paw, claw”) (whence Middle High German pranke, German Pranke (“paw”)), of unknown origin.
Perhaps of Celtic origin, from a hypothetical Gaulish *vranca, from Proto-Indo-European *wrónk-eh₂. If so, then Indo-European cognates include Old Norse rá, vró (“angle, corner”), and possibly Lithuanian rankà (“hand”), Old Church Slavonic рѫка (rǫka, “hand”), Albanian rangë (“yardwork”).
The verb is from Middle English braunchen, from the noun.
Senses: examples: text: Selfe loue, to him ſelf tender, to the reſt tough, / Is, of iuſt iuſtice, neither roote, braunce, nor bough. / Loue (namely ſelfe loue) corruptibly growyng, / Is cheefe lodeſter of lets, in iuſtice ſhowing.
ref: 1556, John Heywood, chapter 7, in The Spider and the Flie. […], London: […] Tho[mas] Powell, →OCLC; republished as A[dolphus] W[illiam] Ward, editor, The Spider and the Flie. […] (Publications of the Spenser Society, New Series; 6), Manchester: […] [Charles E. Simms] for the Spenser Society, 1894, →OCLC, page 50:
text: And they played softly in the Aeolian mode a music that was like the wailing of wind through bare branches on a moonless night, and the Red Foliot leaned forth from his high seat and recited this lamentation: […]
ref: 1922, E[ric] R[ücker] Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros: A Romance, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC, page 31:
synonyms: word: arm
word: bough
word: grain
word: limb
word: tiller
word: tillow
word: twig
word: tree
glosses: The woody part of a tree arising from the trunk and usually dividing.
examples: text: the branch of an antler, a chandelier, or a railway
glosses: Any of the parts of something that divides like the branch of a tree.
examples: text: branch water
coordinate_terms: word: run
english: Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia
translation: Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia
word: brook
glosses: A creek or stream which flows into a larger river.
examples: text: the branches of a hyperbola
topics: geometry
mathematics
sciences
glosses: One of the portions of a curve that extends outwards to an indefinitely great distance.
examples: text: Our main branch is downtown, and we have branches in all major suburbs.
glosses: A location of an organization with several locations.
examples: text: the English branch of a family
text: his father, a younger branch of the ancient stock
ref: 1609, Richard Carew, The Survey of Cornwall, London: […] S[imon] S[tafford] for Iohn Iaggard, […], →OCLC:
text: The gens could admit a new cognomen either for an individual or for a whole branch […]
ref: 1945, E[lizabeth] G[idley] Withycombe, “Introduction”, in The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Clarendon Press, →OCLC, page xv:
glosses: A line of family descent, in distinction from some other line or lines from the same stock; any descendant in such a line.
glosses: A local congregation of the LDS Church that is not large enough to form a ward; see Wikipedia article on ward in LDS church.
examples: text: We live our lives in three dimensions for our threescore and ten allotted years. Yet every branch of contemporary science, from statistics to cosmology, alludes to processes that operate on scales outside of human experience: the millisecond and the nanometer, the eon and the light-year.
ref: 2012 January 23, Robert L. Dorit, “Rereading Darwin”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 1, archived from the original on 14 Nov 2012, page 23:
glosses: An area in business or of knowledge, research.
topics: nautical
transport
glosses: A certificate given by Trinity House to a pilot qualified to take navigational control of a ship in British waters.
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
glosses: A sequence of code that is conditionally executed.
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
glosses: A group of related files in a source control system, including for example source code, build scripts, and media such as images.
topics: rail-transport
railways
transport
glosses: A branch line.
topics: graph-theory
mathematics
sciences
glosses: A path of vertices of degree 2, ending at vertices whose degree is not 2.
Derived terms: anabranch
asymptotic giant branch
bourbon and branch
branch banking
branch current method
branch cut
branch-decomposition
branched
branchery
branchful
branchless
branchlet
branchlike
branch line
branchling
branch manager
branch office
branch of government
branch pilot
branchpoint
branch predictor
branch register
branch stacking
Branch Sunday
branch tee
branch water
branch-water
branchway
branchwise
branchwork
branchy
bundle branch
bundle branch block
cadet branch
charm a bird off a branch
debranch
disbranch
earthly branch
Everett branch
executive branch
fall out of the ugly tree and hit every branch
Farmers Branch
hemibranch
horizontal branch
interbranch
judicial branch
language branch
legislative branch
Long Branch
main branch
microbranch
monkey-branch
multibranch
nanobranch
North Branch
olive-branch
olive branch
pinebranch
pleurobranch
pluribranch
prebranch
principal branch
private branch exchange
pseudobranch
rebranch
root-and-branch
root and branch
saw off the branch one is sitting on
South Branch
Special Branch
sub-branch
subbranch
summer branch drop
terestrial branch
terrestrial branch
the highest branch is not the safest roost
tree-and-branch
tree-branch
underbranch
West Branch