bundling

Pluralbundlings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of bundle.

   Paramedics were bundling the injured hiker into the ambulance.

   The company was accused of bundling its web browser with the operating system.

   Note

   Bundle drops its final e before -ing, as most verbs ending in -le do. The form is busiest in two settings: with up, for wrapping someone in warm clothes (bundling the children up against the cold), and in business, for selling hardware and software together as one product, where the gerund serves as the name of the practice.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The arrangement of things in a bundle or collection.

   Critics objected to the bundling of several unrelated measures into one bill.

   Different bundlings of the same channels left customers comparing a confusing range of plans.

   Similargrouping, packaging, combining

   Note

   The noun is both countable and uncountable. Uncounted, it names the act or the practice, as in the bundling of measures into one bill; counted, each bundling is one particular grouping, a use at home in academic prose. Disputing Citizenship (2014) speaks of the very arrangements or bundlings of different sources of power, authority and legitimacy.

3. 3
   nounhistoricaluncountable

   A former custom, found in Wales, New England and elsewhere, in which courting couples shared a bed without undressing.

   Bundling was a common part of courtship in parts of rural Wales.

   The farmer's wife permitted bundling, provided the young pair kept their clothes on and the door open.

   Note

   A word for a custom of the past: it turns up in histories of courtship and country life, not in accounts of how people court today. Like other names of customs it usually goes without an article, so a family allowed bundling or forbade it. In a modern setting a reader should expect the grouping meaning instead.

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