Bulk definition
An example of bulk is the overall size of a large football player.
The dark bulk of buildings against the sky.
Safety considerations bulked large during development of the new spacecraft.
Certain paper bulks well.
A bulk buy; a bulk mailing.
The bulk of one's fortune.
To bulk large in the mind.
- Unpackaged; loose.
- In large numbers, amounts, or volume.
- not put up in individual packages
- in large amounts; in great volume
Idioms and Phrasal Verbs
Origin of bulk
- Middle English perhaps partly alteration of bouk belly, trunk of the body (from Old English būc) and partly from Old Norse bulki cargo, heap bhel-2 in Indo-European roots
From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition
- From Middle English bolke (“a heap, cargo, hold”), from Old Norse búlki (“the freight or the cargo of a ship”), from Proto-Germanic *bulkô (“beam, pile, heap”), from Proto-Indo-European *bhelǵ- (“beam, pile, prop”), related to Icelandic búlkast (“to be bulky”), Swedish dialectal bulk (“a bunch”), Danish bulk (“bump, knob”). Conflated with Middle English bouk (“belly, trunk”), from Old English būc (“belly, stomach, pitcher”), from Proto-Germanic *būkaz (“belly, body”), from Proto-Indo-European *bhōw- (“to blow, swell”), related to Dutch buik (“belly”), German Bauch (“belly, stomach”), Swedish buk (“belly, abdomen”). More at bouk, bucket.
From Wiktionary