branch
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: computing
engineering
geometry
graph-theory
mathematics
natural-sciences
nautical
physical-sciences
rail-transport
railways
sciences
transport
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.
Inflected forms:
form: branches
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: braunch
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: branches
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: branching
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: branched
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: branched
pos: verb
tags: past
form: braunch
pos: verb
tags: alternative
obsolete
Senses:
gloss: The woody part of a tree arising from the trunk and usually dividing.
pos: noun
examples: 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.
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: […]
gloss: Any of the parts of something that divides like the branch of a tree.
pos: noun
examples: the branch of an antler, a chandelier, or a railway
gloss: A creek or stream which flows into a larger river.
pos: noun
tags: Southern-US
examples: branch water
gloss: One of the portions of a curve that extends outwards to an indefinitely great distance.
pos: noun
examples: the branches of a hyperbola
gloss: A location of an organization with several locations.
pos: noun
examples: Our main branch is downtown, and we have branches in all major suburbs.
gloss: A line of family descent, in distinction from some other line or lines from the same stock; any descendant in such a line.
pos: noun
examples: the English branch of a family
his father, a younger branch of the ancient stock
The gens could admit a new cognomen either for an individual or for a whole branch […]
gloss: A local congregation of the LDS Church that is not large enough to form a ward; see Wikipedia article on ward in LDS church.
pos: noun
tags: Mormonism
gloss: An area in business or of knowledge, research.
pos: noun
examples: 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.
gloss: A certificate given by Trinity House to a pilot qualified to take navigational control of a ship in British waters.
pos: noun
gloss: A sequence of code that is conditionally executed.
pos: noun
gloss: A group of related files in a source control system, including for example source code, build scripts, and media such as images.
pos: noun
gloss: A branch line.
pos: noun
gloss: A path of vertices of degree 2, ending at vertices whose degree is not 2.
pos: noun
gloss: To arise from the trunk or a larger branch of a tree.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
gloss: To produce branches.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: The tree throve and branched so heavily that the windows of Lower West and the Doll's Flat were darkened.
gloss: To (cause to) divide into separate parts or subdivisions.
pos: verb
tags: ambitransitive
gloss: To jump to a different location in a program, especially as the result of a conditional statement.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
gloss: To strip of branches.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: They cut down a young pear-tree, branch it, and carry it home.
gloss: To discipline (a union member) at a branch meeting.
pos: verb
tags: colloquial
transitive
examples: His staff were 'not journalists, but Communists', he maintained. Nonetheless, in 1948 his vigorous editorship took the paper's circulation to 120,000 a day. The following year, he was 'branched' by the National Union of Journalists for an intemperate attack on Fleet Street.
Synonyms: ramify
Antonyms: crotch
Related words: bourbon and branch
branch banking
branch current method
branch-decomposition
branch manager
branch office
branch pilot
branch predictor
branch register
branch stacking
Branch Sunday
branch tee
branch water
branch-water
branchway
bundle branch block
charm a bird off a branch
fall out of the ugly tree and hit every branch
interbranch
private branch exchange
pseudobranch
root and branch
root-and-branch
saw off the branch one is sitting on
summer branch drop
the highest branch is not the safest roost
branch off
branch out
debranch
disbranch
rebranch
Derived words: branched
branchery
branchful
branchless
branchlet
branchlike
branchling
branchwise
branchwork
branchy
The Branch
Translations: