branch

See also: Branch

English

Alternative forms

Etymology
Tree branches

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.[1] 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.

Pronunciation
  • (Received Pronunciation) enPR: bränch, IPA(key): /bɹɑːntʃ/, /bɹɑːnʃ/[2]
  • (US, Northern England) enPR: brănch, IPA(key): /bɹænt͡ʃ/
  • Audio (GA)(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɑːntʃ, -æntʃ

Noun

branch (plural branches)

  1. The woody part of a tree arising from the trunk and usually dividing.
    Synonyms: arm, bough, grain, limb, tiller, tillow, twig; see also Thesaurus:tree
    • 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:
      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.
  2. Any of the parts of something that divides like the branch of a tree.
    the branch of an antler, a chandelier, or a railway
  3. (chiefly Southern US) A creek or stream which flows into a larger river.
    Coordinate terms: (Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia) run, (New York, New England) brook
    branch water
  4. (geometry) One of the portions of a curve that extends outwards to an indefinitely great distance.
    the branches of a hyperbola
  5. A location of an organization with several locations.
    Our main branch is downtown, and we have branches in all major suburbs.
  6. A line of family descent, in distinction from some other line or lines from the same stock; any descendant in such a line.
    the English branch of a family
    • 1609, Richard Carew, The Survey of Cornwall. […], new edition, London: […] B. Law, […]; Penzance, Cornwall: J. Hewett, published 1769, →OCLC:
      his father, a younger branch of the ancient stock
  7. (Mormonism) A local congregation of the LDS Church that is not large enough to form a ward; see Wikipedia article on ward in LDS church.
  8. An area in business or of knowledge, research.
    • 2012 January, Robert L. Dorit, “Rereading Darwin”, in American Scientist‎, volume 100, number 1, archived from the original on 14 November 2012, page 23:
      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.
  9. (nautical) A certificate given by Trinity House to a pilot qualified to take navigational control of a ship in British waters.
  10. (computing) A sequence of code that is conditionally executed.
  11. (computing) A group of related files in a source control system, including for example source code, build scripts, and media such as images.
  12. (rail transport) A branch line.

Derived terms

Translations
rail transport: branch line — see branch line
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Verb

branch (third-person singular simple present branches, present participle branching, simple past and past participle branched)

  1. (intransitive) To arise from the trunk or a larger branch of a tree.
  2. (intransitive) To produce branches.
    • 1944, Emily Carr, “Life Loves Living”, in The House of All Sorts:
      The tree throve and branched so heavily that the windows of Lower West and the Doll's Flat were darkened.
  3. (transitive, intransitive) To (cause to) divide into separate parts or subdivisions.
  4. (intransitive, computing) To jump to a different location in a program, especially as the result of a conditional statement.
  5. (transitive) To strip of branches.
    • 1890, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 2, page 55:
      They cut down a young pear-tree, branch it, and carry it home.
  6. (transitive, colloquial) To discipline (a union member) at a branch meeting.
    • 2003, Paul Routledge, The Bumper Book of British Lefties, page 199:
      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.

Translations
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

References
  1. “branch”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.
  2. The Chambers Dictionary, 9th Ed., 2003

Further reading

Haitian Creole

Etymology

From French branche (“branch”).

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /bɣãʃ/

Noun

branch

  1. branch

Middle English

Noun

branch

  1. Alternative form of braunche

Verb

branch

  1. Alternative form of braunchen
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