Branch
Pronunciation
- US IPA: /bɹæntʃ/
- Rhymes: -æntʃ, -É‘Ëntʃ
- RP IPA: /bɹɑËntʃ/
Alternative forms
Origin
From Middle English branche, braunche, bronche, from Old French branche, brance, from Vulgar Latin branca ("footprint", later also "paw, claw"), of unknown origin, possibly from Gaulish *vranca. Indo-European cognates include Old Norse vró ("angle, corner"), Lithuanian rankà ("hand"), Old Church Slavonic рѫка (rǫka, "hand"), Albanian rangë ("yard work").
Full definition of branch
Noun
branch
(plural branches)- The woody part of a tree arising from the trunk and usually dividing.
- Any of the parts of something that divides like the branch of a tree.the branch of an antler, a chandelier, a river, or a railway
- (geometry) One of the portions of a curve that extends outwards to an indefinitely great distance.the branches of a hyperbola
- A location of an organization with several locations.Our main branch is downtown, and we have branches in all major suburbs.
- 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
- Carewhis father, a younger branch of the ancient stock
- (Mormonism) A local congregation of the LDS Church that is not large enough to form a ward; see Ward (LDS Church).
- An area in business or of knowledge, research.
- 2012-01, Robert L. Dorit, Rereading Darwin, 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.
- (nautical) A certificate given by Trinity House to a pilot qualified to take navigational control of a ship in British waters.
- (computer architecture) A sequence of code that is conditionally executed.