[f. prec. sb.]
1. trans. To tie in, or make up into, a bundle.
1649. Apparitions at Woodstock, in Hone, Every-day Bk., II. 584. The … oak … they had … bundled up into faggots.
1756. Lady M. W. Montague, Lett., xcvi. IV. 76. I bundle up all your letters.
1783. Cowper, Task, IV. 668. Flow’rs … bundled close to fill some crowded vase.
1828. Steuart, Planter’s G., 249. Care must be taken to bundle up all the flexible parts of the roots.
1859. M. Scott, Tom Cringle, x. 204. The cape … was bundled … into a round heap.
1862. Miss Yonge, C’tess Kate, vi. 63. She … bundled up her hair as best she might.
b. To ‘fagot’ bar iron for the purpose of welding it together.
1831. J. Holland, Manuf. Metals, I. 98. To cause bar iron … to be closely fagotted or bundled together.
† 2. fig. To collect, to gather into a mass. (Usually with up or together.) Obs.
a. 1628. F. Greville, Sidney (1652), 235. The former recited particulars, howsoever improperly … bundled up together.
1633. Bp. Hall, Hard Texts, 541. I have bundled up all his sins together … for a meet day of punishment.
1690. Locke, Hum. Und., III. v. (1695), 243. Under one Term, bundle together a great variety of … Ideas.
3. intr. To pack up one’s effects in preparation for a journey; hence, to go with all one’s luggage or incumbrances. Also, of a number of persons: To go precipitately and in disorder, ‘all in a bundle’ (cf. 4): chiefly with in, off, out.
1787. Burns, Prose Wks., 25. The devil’s bagpiper will touch him off ‘Bundle and go!’
1802. G. Colman, Poor Gentl., V. iii. 76 (L.). Is your ladyship’s honour bundling off, then?
1845. Kinglake, Eöthen, xviii. 282. He made both his wives bundle out.
a. 1863. Whately, in Miss Whately, Life & Corr. (1866), II. 428. ‘Curates, rectors, archdeacons, deans, bundle in, bundle in!’
1879. Browning, Ivan Iv., 109. So in we bundled—I and those God gave me once.
4. trans. To put or send (persons or things) away, in, off, out, etc., hurriedly and unceremoniously. Cf. ‘pack off,’ ‘send packing.’
1823. Scott, Peveril (1865), 63. I will bundle away her rags to the Hall.
1830. De Quincey, Bentley, Wks. VII. 39. When he and his are all bundled off to Hades.
1857. Livingstone, Trav., xvi. 300. She … bundled him into the hut.
1876. E. Jenkins, Blot on Queen’s H., 5. They were obliged to eat, drink, and sleep as the manager ordered them, or they were bundled out pretty quick.
1878. C. Bethell, in Law Rep. (1887), 18/1. I have been bundled off to the Cape for a year.
5. intr. To sleep in one’s clothes on the same bed or couch with (as was formerly customary with persons of opposite sexes, in Wales and New England).
1781. S. Peters, Gen. Hist. Connecticut, 325 (Bartlett). It is thought but a piece of civility to ask her [a lady] to BUNDLE.
1809. W. Irving, Knickerb. (1812), II. 31 (Bartlett). He [Van Corlear] stopping occasionally to … dance at country frolics, and bundle with the beauteous lasses of those parts.
1842–78. [see BUNDLING vbl. sb.].
