a1382 Bible (Wycliffite, E.V.) (Douce 369(1)) (1850) Song of Sol. i. 13 The clustre of cipre tree my lemman to me.

c1400 Mandeville Voiage & Travaile (1839) xxvi. 265 Apples..Mo than an 100 in a cluster.

1483 Cath. Angl. 69 A Cluster of nuttis, complustrum.

1555 R. Eden tr. Peter Martyr of Angleria Decades of Newe Worlde iii. x. f. 141^v Their egges are engendered in..clusters.

1668 N. Culpeper & A. Cole tr. T. Bartholin Anat. (new ed.) 349 Five Vertebrae..in a cluster like a round ball.

1851 W. B. Carpenter Man. Physiol. 400 Each of the ultimate ramifications of the bronchial tubes communicates with a cluster of these air-cells.

1880 A. Gray Struct. Bot. No. 400 A Thyrsus is a compact panicle..such as the clusters of flowers of the lilac and horse-chestnut, a bunch of grapes, etc.

a1400–50 Alexander (Ashm.) 1438 On ilka staffe of a staire stike wald a cluster [Dubl. clostre].

1576 A. Fleming tr. Hippocrates in Panoplie Epist. 275 The citizens, who..gathered together in a cluster at the gates.

1625 S. Purchas Pilgrimes II. vii. v. 1045 As Bees doe in the Sunne, all in a cluster.

1697 W. Dampier New Voy. around World xvii. 476 The cluster of Islands lying South of the Andeman Islands.

1835 J. Ross Narr. Second Voy. North-west Passage x. 148 Some clusters of islets.

a1774 A. Tucker Light of Nature Pursued (1777) III. iii. 377 Sensitive and reflective ideas..will run together in clusters.

1870 H. Spencer Princ. Psychol. (ed. 2) I. ii. ii. 175 The component feelings can unite into coherent..clusters.

1728 E. Chambers Cycl. II. 121/2 Nebulous stars, being such as only appear faintly, in clusters, in the form of little lucid nebulæ or clouds.

1854 L. Tomlinson tr. D. F. J. Arago Pop. Lect. Astron. 47 Objects, which had been called nebulæ, are evidently nothing but clusters of stars.

1859 J. F. W. Herschel Outl. Astron. (ed. 6) xvii. 634 In the sword-handle of Perseus, also, is another such spot, crowded with stars, which requires rather a better telescope to resolve into individuals separated from each other. These are called clusters of stars.

1859 J. F. W. Herschel Outl. Astron. (ed. 6) xvii. 637 Nebulæ..have been separated by him [sc. Sir W. Herschel] into—1st. Clusters of stars, in which the stars are clearly distinguishable; and these, again into globular and irregular clusters.

1902 S. I. Bailey in Ann. Astron. Observ. Harvard Coll. XXXVIII. 233 In other clusters..Subclass a appears to be the prevailing type, so much so that the variable stars of this subclass may perhaps be regarded as the typical cluster variables. The apparently perfect uniformity of the period, of the stars of this subclass, indicates that it is associated with some regular returning phenomenon.

1926 H. Macpherson Mod. Astron. 121 In 1895 another sub-class was added by Professor Bailey of Harvard, who detected in that year the ‘cluster variables’, a type closely akin to the Cepheids and Geminids.

1928 J. H. Jeans Astron. & Cosmogony 26 It is not altogether clear to what extent the globular clusters and the moving clusters form distinct formations.

1930 H. Shapley Star Clusters 7 The term ‘galactic cluster’, suggested by Trumpler.., is a natural name for the non-globular cluster, which is almost without exception near the galactic plane. It replaces the term ‘open cluster’, which has caused some confusion... The so-called moving clusters are merely the brighter and nearer of the galactic types in which radial or transverse motions have been measured.

1933 L. Bloomfield Lang. viii. 131 The simplest way to describe the phonetic structure of a language is to state which non-syllabic phonemes or groups of non-syllabic phonemes (clusters) appear in the three possible positions.

1951 S. D. Ullmann Princ. Semantics 48 The highly systematised rules governing the number and nature of initial clusters permissible in any given language (cf. the treatment of initial ps- in ‘psychology, pseudo-’) are among the direct phonemic criteria evolved to this end.

1952 A. Cohen Phonemes of Eng. 69 By medial clusters we understand groups of consonant phonemes that occur between two vowels within the word.