different between bunch vs copse

English

Etymology

From Middle English bunche, bonche (“hump, swelling”), of uncertain origin.

Perhaps a variant of *bunge (compare dialectal bung (“heap, grape bunch”)), from Proto-Germanic *bunk?, *bunkô, *bung? (“heap, crowd”), from Proto-Indo-European *b?en??-, *b?éng??us (“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 búož? (“knob”), Ancient Greek ????? (pakhús, “thick”), Sanskrit ??? (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”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?b?nt?/
• Rhymes: -?nt?

Noun

bunch (plural bunches)

1. A group of similar things, either growing together, or in a cluster or clump, usually fastened together.
2. (cycling) The peloton; the main group of riders formed during a race.
3. An informal body of friends.

   • “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—!"

4. (US, informal) A considerable amount.

5. (informal) An unmentioned amount; a number.

6. (forestry) A group of logs tied together for skidding.
7. (geology, mining) An unusual concentration of ore in a lode or a small, discontinuous occurrence or patch of ore in the wallrock.
   • 1874, David Page, Economic Geology: Or, Geology in Its Relations to the Arts and Manufactures

     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

8. (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.
9. An unfinished cigar, before the wrapper leaf is added.

10. A protuberance; a hunch; a knob or lump; a hump.

Synonyms

• (group of similar things): cluster, group
• (informal body of friends): pack, group, gang, circle
• (unusual concentration of ore): ore pocket, pocket, pocket of ore, kidney, nest, nest of ore, ore bunch, bunch of ore

Derived terms

• buncha (bunch of)

Translations

Verb

bunch (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.
4. (intransitive) To be gathered together in folds
5. (intransitive) To protrude or swell
   • 1728, John Woodward, An Attempt towards a Natural History of the Fossils of England

     Bunching out into a large round knob at one end.

Synonyms

• (form a bunch): cluster, group

Derived terms

• bunch up

Translations

English

Etymology

1578, from coppice, by contraction, originally meaning “small wood grown for purposes of periodic cutting”.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /k?ps/
• Rhymes: -?ps
• Homophone: cops

Noun

copse (plural copses)

1. A thicket of small trees or shrubs.
   • 1578, Rembert Dodoens (author) and Henry Lyte (translator), A niewe Herball or Historie of Plantes page 57:

     Agrimonie groweth in places not tylled, in rough stone mountaynes, in hedges and Copses, and by waysides.

   • 1798, William Wordsworth, Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, lines 9–15 (for syntax):

     The day is come when I again repose

     Here, under this dark sycamore, and view

     These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard tufts,

     Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,

     Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves

     ’Mid groves and copses.

   • 1919, Ronald Firbank, Valmouth, Duckworth (hardback edition), p19:

     Striking the highway beyond the little copse she skirted the dark iron palings enclosing Hare.

Synonyms

• coppice

Translations

See also

• bush, bushes, forest, mott, orchard
• stand, thicket, wood, woods

Verb

copse (third-person singular simple present copses, present participle copsing, simple past and past participle copsed)

1. (transitive, horticulture) To trim or cut.
2. (transitive, horticulture) To plant and preserve.

Further reading

• James A. H. Murray [et al.], editors (1884–1928) , “Copse”, in A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford English Dictionary), volume II (C), London: Clarendon Press, OCLC 15566697, page 977, column 1.

Anagrams

• -scope, OPSEC, Pecos, copes, scope, ?-scope, ?scope