bulk

Meaning

Noun

1. (countable, uncountable) Size, specifically, volume.
2. (countable, uncountable) Any huge body or structure.
3. (countable, uncountable) The major part of something.
4. (countable, uncountable) The major part of something.
5. (countable, uncountable) The major part of something.
6. (countable, uncountable) Dietary fibre.
7. (uncountable) Unpackaged goods when transported in large volumes, e.g. coal, ore, or grain.
8. (countable) A cargo or any items moved or communicated in the manner of cargo.
9. (countable, uncountable) Excess body mass, especially muscle.
10. (countable, uncountable) A period where one tries to gain muscle.
11. (countable, uncountable) A hypothetical higher-dimensional space within which our own four-dimensional universe may exist.
12. (countable, obsolete, uncountable) The body.

Adj

1. (not-comparable) Being large in size, mass, or volume (of goods, etc.).
2. (not-comparable) Total.

Verb

1. (intransitive) To appear or seem to be, as to bulk or extent.
2. (intransitive) To grow in size; to swell or expand.
3. (intransitive) To gain body mass by means of diet, exercise, etc.
4. (transitive) To put or hold in bulk.
5. (obsolete, transitive) To add bulk to; to bulk out.

Synonyms

size

mass

volume

dimension

magnitude

extent

majority

scale

extend

measurement

breadth

bulge

measure

quantity

scope

range

body

gross

figure

capacity

heap

bunch

area

hunch

lot

bountiful

cubic content

crowd

cut

bottle

batch

corpus

containment

configuration

clump

blow up

barrel

amplify

chunk

generality

cask

block

gauge

gist

gobbet

cargo

growth

figuration

heft

bigness

Translations

grootte

Größe

omvang

ampleur

bestek

Masse

volumen

grandeur

extensão

volume

Umfang

masse

Dimension

taille

vrac

Pronounced as (IPA)

/bʌlk/

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English: bulk

Cognate with Icelandic: búlkast

Cognate with Swedish: -

Cognate with Danish: bulk

In summary

From Middle English bulk, bolke (“a heap, cargo, hold; heap; bulge”), borrowed from Old Norse búlki (“the freight or the cargo of a ship”), from Proto-Germanic *bulkô (“beam, pile, heap”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰelǵ- (“beam, pile, prop”). Compare Icelandic búlkast (“to be bulky”), Swedish dialectal bulk (“a bunch”), Danish bulk (“bump, knob”).
Conflated with Middle English bouk (“belly, trunk”).

Sentences

I have already described the appearance of that colossal bulk which was embedded in the ground .