branchy

English

Etymology

From branch +‎ -y.

Adjective

branchy (comparative branchier or more branchy, superlative branchiest or most branchy)

1. Having many branches.

   The shrub was too branchy. It needed to be pruned so it would have a few strong shoots instead of many weak ones.

   • 1795, William Blake, The Book of Los, Chapter II, lines 92-4, in Blake: The Complete Poems, 3rd edition, Routledge, 2007, p. 288,

     […] there grew / Branchy forms, organizing the Human / Into finite inflexible organs,

   • 1834 September (date written), Alfred Tennyson, “Sir Galahad”, in Poems. […], volume II, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, stanza V, lines 58-60:

     No branchy thicket shelter yields; / But blessed forms in whistling storms / Fly o'er waste fens and windy fields.

   • 1847 October 16, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter X, in Jane Eyre. An Autobiography. […], volume II, London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC, pages 255–256:

     [T]he trees blew stedfastly one way, never writhing round, and scarcely tossing back their boughs once in an hour; so continuous was the strain bending their branchy heads northward— […]

   • 1879, Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Duns Scotus’s Oxford”, in Robert Bridges, editor, Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Now First Published […], London: Humphrey Milford, published 1918, →OCLC, stanza 1, page 41:

     Towery city and branchy between towers; / Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark-charmèd, rook-racked, river-rounded; / The dapple-eared lily below thee; that country and town did / Once encounter in, here coped and poisèd powers; […]

2. Tending to branch frequently.

Derived terms

• branchiness

 

Translations

having many branches

• Bulgarian: клонест (klonest), разклонен (bg) (razklonen)
• Finnish: monihaarainen, oksainen (fi)
• French: branchu (fr)
• Galician: ramudo, ramalludo (gl)
• Latin: pampinōsus
• Romanian: rămuros (ro) m

tending to branch frequently

• Finnish: haarova