Join free

Branch

AI In plain words

Writing a short explanation…

Written by a house AI from the entry below, in your language. The entry itself is the source.

branch¹

  • /bɹɑːnt͡ʃ/ UK
  • /bɹænt͡ʃ/ US
  • /bɹant͡ʃ/ Northern England

Rhymes with -ɑːntʃ, -æntʃ

Where it comes from

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.

noun branches · braunch

  1. The woody part of a tree arising from the trunk and usually dividing. 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. Southern US A creek or stream which flows into a larger river. branch water
  4. 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
  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. 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. A certificate given by Trinity House to a pilot qualified to take navigational control of a ship in British waters.
  10. A sequence of code that is conditionally executed.
  11. A group of related files in a source control system, including for example source code, build scripts, and media such as images.
  12. A branch line.
  13. A path of vertices of degree 2, ending at vertices whose degree is not 2.

verb branches · branching · branched · braunch

  1. intransitive To arise from the trunk or a larger branch of a tree.
  2. intransitive To produce branches. The tree throve and branched so heavily that the windows of Lower West and the Doll's Flat were darkened.
  3. ambitransitive To (cause to) divide into separate parts or subdivisions.
  4. intransitive To jump to a different location in a program, especially as the result of a conditional statement.
  5. transitive To strip of branches. They cut down a young pear-tree, branch it, and carry it home.
  6. colloquial, transitive To discipline (a union member) at a branch meeting. 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.

Similar: ramify

Branch²

  • /ˈbɹænt͡ʃ/

Sounds like branch · Rhymes with -æntʃ

Where it comes from

Surname derived from the noun branch. In addition to being a native English surname, the noun has also been calqued from the word for "branch" in other languages, such as German Zweig, Swedish gren, etc.

The name of the town in Newfoundland is likely derived from French Branch (“a surname”) or Branche.

proper noun

  1. A surname from Old French.
  2. A tiny city in Franklin County, Arkansas.
  3. An unincorporated community and census-designated place in Acadia Parish, Louisiana.
  4. An unincorporated community in Sweetwater Township, Lake County, Michigan.
  5. An unincorporated community in Camden County, Missouri.
  6. An unincorporated community in Collin County, Texas.
  7. An unincorporated community in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin.
  8. A town in Newfoundland, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.

Talk about this word