You can hold the picture of a tree: one main trunk, and off it grow limbs that split away and reach out in their own directions. Everything else ‘branch’ does is this same shape — a main body sending out arms that lead off elsewhere.
From the word’s history
English ‘branch’ comes through Old French from Late Latin branca meaning ‘paw, claw’; a tree’s limbs spreading out from the trunk were seen like the spread fingers of a claw, which is the same fan-out shape the word still carries.
branch 經古法語來自晚期拉丁文的 branca，意思是「爪、掌」；樹幹向外張開的枝幹，就像一隻爪子張開的指頭。這個「從一點張開、往外分出去」的形狀，正是這個字到現在還帶著的畫面。
etymonline.com/word/branch
登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。
原始詞典資料27 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
Branchname/ˈbɹænt͡ʃ/
- 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.
branchnoun/bɹɑːnt͡ʃ/
- 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.
- And they played softly in the Aeolian mode a music that was like the wailing of wind through bare branches on a moonless night, and the Red Foliot leaned forth from his high seat and recited this lamentation: […]
- 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
A creek or stream which flows into a larger river.
- branch water
- 4
geometrymathematicssciencesOne 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
- his father, a younger branch of the ancient stock
- 7
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.
另外 5 個記錄的用法
- 9
nauticaltransportA certificate given by Trinity House to a pilot qualified to take navigational control of a ship in British waters.
- 10
computingengineeringmathematicsA sequence of code that is conditionally executed.
- 11
computingengineeringmathematicsA group of related files in a source control system, including for example source code, build scripts, and media such as images.
- 12
rail-transportrailwaystransportA branch line.
- 13
graph-theorymathematicssciencesA path of vertices of degree 2, ending at vertices whose degree is not 2.
branchverb/bɹɑːnt͡ʃ/
- 1
To arise from the trunk or a larger branch of a tree.
- 2
To produce branches.
- The tree throve and branched so heavily that the windows of Lower West and the Doll's Flat were darkened.
- 3
To (cause to) divide into separate parts or subdivisions.
- 4
computingengineeringmathematicsTo jump to a different location in a program, especially as the result of a conditional statement.
- 5
To strip of branches.
- They cut down a young pear-tree, branch it, and carry it home.
- 6
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.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。