branchy

comparative branchier · comparative more branchy · superlative branchiest · superlative 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.

   4 more examples

   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,

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

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

   [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— […]

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

   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; […]

   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

2. Tending to branch frequently.