Batch

How to spell batch

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce batch

What does batch mean?

1. nounA quantity of things made, produced, or dealt with at one time.
2. verbTo group items together so they can be processed at the same time.

Batch in a sentence

• noun

  The bakery sold the first batch of bread before nine.

• verb

  The software can batch the orders and send them overnight.

• noun

  She printed a fresh batch of invoices for the morning post.

• verb

  He likes to batch his errands into a single trip across town.

Where does batch come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word comes from the Old English verb bacan, meaning 'to bake', and originally referred to a quantity of bread baked together in a single firing of the oven. The earlier form was something like 'bacche', built on the same root that gives us the modern verb 'bake', and the spelling later settled with a -tch ending that reflects how the final sound was pronounced. Over time the sense widened from loaves to any group of things produced or handled together at one time, such as a batch of biscuits, paperwork, or beer. By the modern era it had also become a useful verb in computing and manufacturing, where to batch means to gather items so they can be processed as one group. The link back to baking is a handy memory aid: a batch is what comes out of the oven all at once, which is why the word ends like 'catch' and 'match' rather than with a plain -ch.

How the word is built

• batch (from Old English bacan, to bake: literally a quantity baked at one time)