Your English: Idioms: bundle

The word bundle can be used to emphasise that someone has a lot of a particular quality, as in ‘Susan is a real bundle of energy’ or ‘You should have seen him before the interview. He was a bundle of nerves’.

If someone is described as a bundle of laughs, this can mean that they are very funny but the phrase is often used in the negative, as in ‘I’m not looking forward to travelling up to Manchester with Ian. He’s not exactly a bundle of laughs, is he?’ Similarly, the expression a bundle of fun can be used to describe something that is enjoyable but, again, is usually used in the negative, as in ‘How was your weekend? Well, it wasn’t exactly a bundle of fun, I can tell you’.

If you don’t go a bundle on something, you show very little enthusiasm for it or you don’t like it, as in ‘People round here don’t go a bundle on posh restaurants’.

If you make a bundle, you earn a lot of money for something, as in ‘He made a bundle when he sold his house at the peak of the housing boom’. You can also save a bundle, as in ‘You can save a bundle on air fares if you shop around’. It is also possible to lose a bundle if things go wrong, as in ‘He lost a bundle when he invested in that dodgy business’.

A bundle of joy is an idiomatic term for a baby and is often used jokingly, as in ‘We didn’t get a wink of sleep last night, thanks to our little bundle of joy’.