Meaning of branch in English:

1A part of a tree which grows out from the trunk or from a bough.

1. 1.1A lateral extension or subdivision extending from the main part of a river, road, railway, etc.
   ‘a branch of the Clinton River’
   More example sentences

   • ‘In the Rio Negro, it inhabits the large swamps that form where tributaries meet the main branch of the river.’
   • ‘That hill led to the back of another sight, and that sight was connected to a branch of the main road.’
   • ‘The main station is being built at Ondangwa where the railway branches to Oshakati and to Oshikango.’
   • ‘Several small branches of the corridor extend north and south of the main corridor.’
   • ‘From there it will be carried up into the largest vein of the body and into the right side of the heart, then into the main branches of the arteries to the lung, where it will impact, blocking the blood flow.’
   • ‘It is not officially a branch, but rather an extension of the main line first named the Oshawa Subdivision and re-named the Belleville Subdivision.’
   • ‘The mid-April snow storm will provide significant moisture for increased streamflow on the southern branch of the Platte River in Colorado.’
   • ‘But this map also clearly shows that the river has many canals, streams, branches and tributaries.’
   • ‘Private GEO-TV said the bus was traveling along the Karakoram highway in Kohistan when it left the road and fell into a branch of the Indus river.’
   • ‘Shakadang Stream is a branch of the Liwu River, which cuts through rock layers 9 million years old to carve the Taroko Gorge.’
   • ‘Beyond a collection of compact, stone cottages, which were contemporaries of the Seadog's Roost, a minor branch of the road curved to the left.’
   • ‘Second, Goondiwindi's water park incorporates the Serpentine Creek, a branch of the Macintyre River.’
   • ‘A mistake at a university in Laval and a railway branch built by the Canadian National changed things.’
   • ‘My original intent was to ride all three branches of Metro North's New Haven Line in Connecticut.’
   • ‘He's going to come to a number of branches in the road, where he will choose, or events will choose, which road is taken.’
   • ‘Georgia was also on one of the branches of the Silk Road, which carried trade from China and India to Europe.’
   • ‘They took the western branch of the road to begin with.’
   • ‘At this point they took the eastern branch of the road and walked for another five days.’
   • ‘We walked through endless marble corridors that twisted and turned with many branches leading from the main thoroughfare.’
   • ‘Farther upstream, two branches of the river offer wilder rainbows and brook trout.’
   Synonyms

   tributary, feeder, side stream

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2. 1.2A division or office of a large business or organization, operating locally or having a particular function.
   ‘he went to work at our Birmingham branch’
   More example sentences

   • ‘Postbank operates 30 branches and 93 offices across the country and is represented in about 2300 post offices in Bulgaria.’
   • ‘In the Rangoon division, 18 out of 40 branch offices are now operating, with nine permitted to put up their old signboards.’
   • ‘This organization replaced an association of NGOs working for alcohol abstinence and had branch offices operating on regional and local levels.’
   • ‘Experienced branch managers will operate the elevators.’
   • ‘As the leading bank for businesses, with a network of over 1600 branches and 1400 business managers, no one is better placed to help businesses succeed.’
   • ‘Instead of being located in branches, business bank managers are being rehoused in three centralised sites in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Inverness.’
   • ‘The idea is to make it easier for small businesses and branch offices to manage security risks more efficiently by using a single appliance.’
   • ‘The layoffs affected 14 employees locally and 11 in branch offices.’
   • ‘It ran a big trading business and had branch offices in many locations such as Osaka, Kobe and Hokkaido.’
   • ‘The unions, which function as virtual corporate branch offices, immediately got the message.’
   • ‘In most cases of loan default, the axe always falls on the branch manager and middle-level officers.’
   • ‘The arrangement breaks down the division between headquarters and branch offices.’
   • ‘Remote workers, branch offices and small businesses have all been persuaded of the advantages of the appliance route.’
   • ‘He was surprised by the willingness of branch managers to merge businesses and share common facilities without head office intervention.’
   • ‘He said he had an opportunity to open a branch office for an established document-imaging business that two friends of his had started in another state.’
   • ‘This program aims at strengthening the influence of the branch organizations and helping the harmonization of the local legislation with that of the Union.’
   • ‘Not only is the branch post office of essential use to the people of the community, but it also is a centre of vital community communication and a social meeting place.’
   • ‘The branch managers and compliance officers failed in their duty.’
   • ‘Twenty-eight locally registered banks and six branches of foreign banks operate in the country.’
   • ‘Post Office bosses say there are too many branches chasing too little business.’
   Synonyms

   division, subdivision, section, subsection, department, sector, part, side, wing

   office, bureau, agency

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3. 1.3A conceptual subdivision of a family, subject, group of languages, etc.
   ‘a branch of mathematics called graph theory’
   More example sentences

   • ‘Otherwise, the tongues spoken in Indonesia belong to several branches of the Austronesian language family.’
   • ‘All the national languages, with the exception of the official language, English, are Bantu, a branch of the Niger-Congo language family.’
   • ‘The Estonian language is a branch of the Baltic-Finnish group of the Finno-Ugric family, related to Finnish.’
   • ‘Thus, Sanskrit, instead of being the mother of all Indo-European languages, became just a branch of their huge family.’
   • ‘It belongs to the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family.’
   • ‘Serbo-Croatian belongs to the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family.’
   • ‘Russian is one of three East Slavic languages of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family.’
   • ‘Over the years some branches of the family have been blighted by a congenital heart defect but Mrs Pike's illness was coincidental, say friends, because she was adopted.’
   • ‘Because in India, family bonding is still strong, and marriage is one occasion where distant branches of the family are remembered and invited.’
   • ‘Greyhounds, red dragons and portcullises belonging to heraldry of various family branches finish off the decorations.’
   • ‘Two branches of the family came out to Australia together in 1878.’
   • ‘There are many differences between these two branches of the language, and this word is one instance.’
   • ‘I have a feeling you and I are from different branches of the same family!’
   • ‘Family branches take turns to host the ceremony, with the expenditure shared by the whole village.’
   • ‘The family now had branches firmly settled in Michigan and Massachusetts.’
   • ‘A new branch of the English language has emerged to describe the shady practice, with phishing, pharming, keylogging and spyware among the recently coined words.’
   • ‘And we will head out to my great-grandmother's place to meet with the branch of the family I'd rather not meet.’
   • ‘Which of us, after all, has grown up in an apartment block specifically built to house, on each of its eight floors, a different branch of our own family?’
   • ‘Now I must explain that my family - or branches thereof - have lived in South Africa for 154 years.’
   • ‘Hungarian belongs to the Ugor branch of the Finno-Ugric language family.’

1(of a road or path) divide into one or more subdivisions.

1. 1.1branch offDiverge from the main route or part.
   ‘the road branched off at the market town’
   More example sentences

   • ‘Some RTC buses branched off from the main roads to find emergency escape routes like by-lanes, already jammed by cars and two-wheelers!’
   • ‘Nestle into one of several campsites at the base of the 300-foot-tall amphitheater, and explore the many slots and dry waterfalls branching off from Labyrinth's main canyon.’
   • ‘A more adventurous method would be to simply explore each road radiating from the main junction or branching off into narrow arteries, and you'll be bound to hit the same spots, more or less.’
   • ‘At a certain point, we saw several people branching off from the main march and, along with other Council activists, we went to see what was happening.’
   • ‘The trail around the tarn is a favourite for families, with plenty of play opportunities in water and woodland, and lots of optional tracks branching off from the main path.’
   • ‘Feedback has so far been extremely positive about the exterior of the glass-fronted building and its internal design, which features an indoor avenue that branches off to the four main galleries.’
   • ‘For walkers, a narrow, rocky path, with steps in places, branches off the main track before the last bridge, and follows the Greta beneath the A66.’
   • ‘We continued more sedately through open country of varying steepness to the crossover point where routes branch off to different villages in the Prättigau valley.’
   • ‘Building styles from throughout the country branch off from a main square, showing the visitor a miniature Spain.’
   • ‘Twelve long tendrils stretched out from a central mountain, with smaller mounds branching off from the main stem in a leaf-like pattern and eventually tapering down to become one with the landscape.’
   • ‘She'd noticed some liver spots on his cheeks, forehead and hands in the last few years, deep lines like streams cascading down his face, with others forming, branching off a main tributary.’
   • ‘In one instance, a fourth and much smaller tunnel appears as the deepest tier owing to branching off from a main tunnel.’
   • ‘Streets are carved out of the landscape as veins branching off a main artery, with framed vistas across the harbor.’
   • ‘Another path branches off from the main one, but they walk past it.’
   • ‘It branched off the main path and was rarely used.’
   • ‘They backtracked far into the cave, away into one of the tunnels that branched off from the main one, and finally into a small cavern.’
   • ‘As I passed into an unfamiliar area of the town, a small alley that branched off of the main street, I heard a cry.’
   • ‘I pointed along a narrow dirt path that branched off the main access road.’
   • ‘I led the way into one of the back halls that branched off the main room.’
   • ‘However, paths branched off the main one and led through the various beds of flowers and bushes.’
   Synonyms

   swerve, career, skew, swing, sheer, weave, wheel

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2. 1.2branch outExtend or expand one's activities or interests in a new direction.
   ‘the company is branching out into Europe’
   More example sentences

   • ‘He said the tour has given the band the chance to branch out and explore different directions and to satisfy their eclectic tastes.’
   • ‘Certainly, they branch out in different directions in attitudes to football management.’
   • ‘Acting is still a great love of mine, but I thought it was time to branch out and expand my world.’
   • ‘Suddenly, the auto maker seems to be branching out in all directions at once.’
   • ‘With this confidence, I branched out into other fitness activities, such as kickboxing and Spinning.’
   • ‘From these locations different groups branched out in various directions with different levels of success.’
   • ‘With five victories and 13 poles, his interests branched out.’
   • ‘Originally a Reiki practitioner, she has during the years branched out in several directions and is still learning.’
   • ‘The company was looking to expand and to branch out from large metropolitan areas.’
   • ‘We knew in the early 1990s that we needed to diversify and branched out into a lot of different areas.’
   • ‘She has certainly branched out into more interesting work in recent years.’
   • ‘Not one to rest on his laurels, the last few years have seen the front man branch out with two diverse releases of his own.’
   • ‘But what she's really excited about is her plan to branch out into directing.’
   • ‘I think I would be more interested in branching out and making other types of pop culture.’
   • ‘What's so attractive about diversifying from the insurance business and branching out into personal loans?’
   • ‘He should spend more time expanding the commercial side of the market before branching out.’
   • ‘But even with its rise in popularity, instead of branching out its warehouses to bigger cities, the company says its heart lies firmly in Rossendale.’
   • ‘The company started life as a shuttle service linking Dublin Airport with the main hotels in the city centre, before branching out beyond Dublin.’
   • ‘As you may have heard, he has been branching out from talk radio into jurisprudence and constitutional law.’
   • ‘I've gotten a lot of new opportunities I wouldn't have gotten unless I was branching out and doing new things.’
   Synonyms

   expand, spread out, open up, extend

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2(of a tree or plant) bear or send out branches.