Bench

Bench or The Bench can refer to:

• Bench (furniture), a piece of furniture, which typically offers seating for several people.
• In Yiddish, to bench means to bless, from Latin benedīcere. In Jewish-English it refers to any of a number of blessings given or recited, among them:
  • Benchen most commonly refers to Birkat Hamazon, the grace after meals
  • Licht benchen, the blessing of Shabbat candles
  • Gomel benchen, reciting Birkat Hagomel, the blessing for surviving illness or danger
  • Birkat Cohanim, the priestly blessing
  • Birkat Habanim, the blessing parents give to their children
• Bench language (Bench-non), a Northern Omotic language spoken in Kaffa (southeastern Ethiopia)
• Workbench or lab bench, a place of work consisting of a table and perhaps places to keep an arrangement of tools and materials.
• Bench (clothing brand), a British clothing brand.

Law and politics

• Bench (metonymy), certain people in a given context, associated with a particular seating area, especially in politics and law
• Bench (law), the location where a judge sits while in court, often a raised desk in a courtroom; also refers to the judiciary as a whole (to differentiate from the bar (law) – the lawyers or barristers); and may also mean a group of judges hearing a case and judging on a case.

Sports

• The "bench" refers to the players on the roster who do not start regularly or are not currently playing in any given game ("on the bench")
  • In soccer, the technical area contains the dugout (or "bench")
• Bench (weight training), a piece of weight training equipment, often very similar to the above "wide backless chair"
• Bench press, one of three power-lifting exercises
• The Bench (University of California), the student rooting section for the University of California men's basketball team

Geology

• Bench (geology), a bench is a long, relatively narrow strip of relatively level or gently inclined land of differing origins that is bounded by distinctly steeper slopes above and below it. Also, in mining, it refers to steps cut into the side of open-pit mines.

Arts

• The Bench (film), a short film from The Northern Film School in the United Kingdom
• The Bench (TV series), a BBC legal drama series set in a Welsh magistrate's court
• The Bench (Hogarth), a 1758 oil-on-canvas painting by the English artist William Hogarth

People

• Bench (woreda), a people in Ethiopia
• Jo Bench, an English death metal bass player
• Johnny Bench, a former Major League Baseball player for the Cincinnati Reds from 1967 to 1983