bunch

Meaning

1. A group of similar things, either growing together, or in a cluster or clump, usually fastened together.
2. The illegitimate supplying of laboratory animals that are act
3. The peloton; the main group of riders formed during a race.
4. An informal body of friends.
5. (informal) A considerable amount.
6. (informal) An unmentioned amount; a number.
7. A group of logs tied together for skidding.
8. An unusual concentration of ore in a lode or a small, discontinuous occurrence or patch of ore in the wallrock.
9. The reserve yarn on the filling bobbin to allow continuous weaving between the time of indication from the midget feeler until a new bobbin is put in the shuttle.
10. An unfinished cigar, before the wrapper leaf is added.
11. A protuberance; a hunch; a knob or lump; a hump.
12. (obsolete) A seventeenth-century unit of Rhenish glass, 60 of which constitute a way or web.

Frequency

Pronounced as (IPA)

/bʌntʃ/

Etymology

From Middle English bunche, bonche (“hump, swelling”), of uncertain origin. Perhaps a variant of *bunge (compare dialectal bung (“heap, grape bunch”)), from Proto-Germanic *bunkō, *bunkô, *bungǭ (“heap, crowd”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰenǵʰ-, *bʰéng̑ʰus (“thick, dense, fat”). Cognates include Saterland Frisian Bunke (“bone”), West Frisian bonke (“bone, lump, bump”), Dutch bonk (“lump, bone”), Low German Bunk (“bone”), German Bunge (“tuber”), Danish bunke (“heap, pile”), Faroese bunki (“heap, pile”); Hittite [Term?] (/⁠panku⁠/, “total, entire”), Tocharian B pkante (“volume, fatness”), Lithuanian búožė (“knob”), Ancient Greek παχύς (pakhús, “thick”), Sanskrit बहु (bahú, “thick; much”)). Alternatively, perhaps from a variant or diminutive of bump (compare hump/hunch, lump/lunch, etc.); or from dialectal Old French bonge (“bundle”) (compare French bongeau, bonjeau, bonjot), from West Flemish bondje, diminutive of West Flemish bond (“bundle”).