Definition
nounA group of similar things, either growing together, or in a cluster or clump, usually fastened together.
nounThe peloton; the main group of riders formed during a race.
Sentence Examples
Years ago, she used to hang around with a bunch of bikers.
A bunch of people thrust their way toward the rear exit.
Word Origin & History
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-, *bʰénǵʰus (“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”).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"When we had examined this last find, Lord Godalming and Quincey Morris taking accurate notes of the various addresses of the houses in the East and the South, took with them the keys in a great bunch, and set out to destroy the boxes in these places."
— 1897, Bram Stoker, chapter 21, in Dracula:
"I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn."
— 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
"Why do we sometimes find three buses on the same route arriving together at a bus stop? What is the explanation of bunching? […] Meanwhile there are other buses following on the same route. The 600-yard interval between the second and third bus is decreased by every second's delay to the leaders, and before long the third bus has caught up. That is why buses sometimes arrive at the bus stop in bunches."
— 1949 July and August, Railway Magazine, page vii, advertisement by London Transport:
"“I don't mean all of your friends—only a small proportion—which, however, connects your circle with that deadly, idle, brainless bunch—the insolent chatterers at the opera, the gorged dowagers,[…], the jewelled animals whose moral code is the code of the barnyard—!""
— 1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter VI, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:
"The ore may be disseminated throughout the matrix in minute particles, as gold in quartz; in parallel threads, strings, and plates, as with copper; in irregular pockets or bunches"
— 1874, David Page, Economic Geology: Or, Geology in Its Relations to the Arts and Manufactures: