a. [f. BRANCH sb. + -Y1.]
1. Bearing branches; full of, covered with, or consisting of branches.
1382. Wyclif, 2 Kings xvii. 10. And vndir al braunchy tree.
1480. Caxton, Ovid’s Met., XIV. xv. Com to me, into this braunchy wood.
1661. K. W., Conf. Charac. (1860), 89. Called arms, for their hard branchey resemblance.
1725. Pope, Odyss., V. 313. [Trees] … lopp’d and lighten’d of their branchy load.
1820. Combe (Dr. Syntax), Consol., I. 134. The cedar, The branchy monarch of the wood.
1850. Blackie, Æschylus, I. 35. The outspread olive’s branchy shade.
2. transf. Putting forth offshoots, or divisions; wide-spreading, ramifying; also (of deer) bearing horns, antlered.
1606. N. Baxter, Man Created, in Farr’s S. P. (1848), 238. Within a branchie filme there lyeth the braine.
1676. J. Beaumont, in Phil. Trans., XI. 731. I have a piece of branchy spar.
1830. T. Hamilton, Cyril Thornton (1845), 99. The deer … stood … tossing high their branchy foreheads.
1830. Tennyson, Talking Oak, 273. The fat earth feed thy branchy root.
