Definition of "bunch"

bunch

/bʌntʃ/

noun
plural bunches
1. A group of similar things, either growing together, or in a cluster or clump, usually fastened together.
  Quotations
  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. Lincoln, chapter 1, in Mr. Pratt's Patients
  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
2. (uncountable) The illegitimate supplying of laboratory animals that are act
3. (cycling) The peloton; the main group of riders formed during a race.
4. An informal body of friends.
  Quotations
  “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
5. (US, informal) A considerable amount.
6. (informal) An unmentioned amount; a number.
7. (forestry) A group of logs tied together for skidding.
8. (geology, mining) An unusual concentration of ore in a lode or a small, discontinuous occurrence or patch of ore in the wallrock.
  Quotations
  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
9. (textiles) 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. (smoking) An unfinished cigar, before the wrapper leaf is added.
11. A protuberance; a hunch; a knob or lump; a hump.
  Quotations
  They will carry […] their treasures upon the bunches of camels.
  1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Isaiah 30:6
verb
third-person singular simple present bunches, present participle bunching, simple past and past participle bunched
1. (transitive) To gather into a bunch.
2. (transitive) To gather fabric into folds.
3. (intransitive) To form a bunch.
  Quotations
  "Permissive" working allows more than one train to be in a block section at one time but trains must be run at low speed in order to stop on sight behind the train in front. Such working is often authorised to allow freight trains to "bunch" together to await a path through a bottleneck instead of being strung out over several block sections, as would be necessary if absolute working were in force.
  1962 October, “Talking of Trains: The collisions at Connington”, in Modern Railways, page 232
4. (intransitive) To be gathered together in folds
5. (intransitive) To protrude or swell
  Quotations
  A very large ſparry Nodule externally of a brown Colour. It has ſomewhat of the reſemblance of a large Champignon before 'tis open'd, bunching out into a large round Knob at one end, the part proceeding from it being leſs, round, and not unlike a Stalk.
  1729, J[ohn] Woodward, “Classis V. Corpora Coralloidea, & hisce affinia.”, in An Attempt towards a Natural History of the Fossils of England; […], tome I, London: […] F[rancis] Fayram, […]; J[ohn] Senex, […]; and J. Osborn and T[homas] Longman, […], part I (Of the Fossils that are Real and Natural: […]), page 144