branching

Verb

branch (third-person singular simple present branches, present participle branching, simple past and past participle branched)

1. (intransitive) To arise from the trunk or a larger branch of a tree.
2. (intransitive) To produce branches.
   • The tree throve and branched so heavily that the windows of Lower West and the Doll's Flat were darkened.1944, Emily Carr, “Life Loves Living”, in The House of All Sorts
3. (ambitransitive) To (cause to) divide into separate parts or subdivisions.
4. (intransitive) To jump to a different location in a program, especially as the result of a conditional statement.
5. (transitive) To strip of branches.
   • They cut down a young pear-tree, branch it, and carry it home.1890, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 2, page 55
6. (colloquial, transitive) 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.2003, Paul Routledge, The Bumper Book of British Lefties, page 199

See all 27 meanings of branch