bind

verb (past and past participle bound /baʊnd/)

• 1tie or fasten (something) tightly together:logs bound together with ropes they bound her hands and feet
• restrain (someone) by tying their hands and feet:the raider then bound and gagged Mr Glenn
• wrap (something) tightly:her hair was bound up in a towel
• bandage (a wound):Shelley cleaned the wound and bound it up with a clean dressing
• (be bound with) (of an object) be encircled by something, typically metal bands, so as to have greater strength:an ancient oak chest bound with brass braces

• 2stick together or cause to stick together in a single mass: [with object]:mix the flour with the coconut and enough egg white to bind them
• cause (painting pigments) to form a smooth medium by mixing them with oil.
• hold by chemical bonding: a protein in a form that can bind DNA
• [no object] (bind to) combine with (a substance) through chemical bonding: these proteins have been reported to bind to calmodulin

• 3cause (people) to feel united:the comradeship that had bound such a disparate bunch of lads together
• (bind someone to) cause someone to feel strongly attached to (a person or place):touches like that had bound men to him for life

• 4impose a legal or contractual obligation on:a party who signs a document will normally be bound by its terms
• indenture (someone) as an apprentice: he was bound apprentice at the age of sixteen
• (bind oneself) formal make a contractual or enforceable undertaking:the government cannot bind itself as to the form of subsequent legislation
• (of a court of law) require (someone) to fulfil an obligation, typically by paying a sum of money as surety:he was bound over to keep the peace by magistrates
• (be bound by) be hampered or constrained by:Sarah did not want to be bound by a rigid timetable

• 5fix together and enclose (the pages of a book) in a cover:a small, fat volume, bound in red morocco

• 6trim (the edge of a piece of material) with a decorative strip:a frill with the edges bound in a contrasting colour

• 7 Logic (of a quantifier) be applied to (a given variable) so that the variable falls within its scope. For example, in an expression of the form ‘For every x, if x is a dog, x is an animal’, the universal quantifier is binding the variable x.

• 8 Linguistics (of a rule or set of grammatical conditions) determine the relationship between (coreferential noun phrases).

• 9(of a food or medicine) make (someone) constipated.

noun

• 1 informal a nuisance:I know being disturbed on Christmas Day is a bind
• a problematical situation:he is in a political bind over the abortion issue

• 2 formal a statutory constraint:the moral bind of the law

• 3 Musicanother term for tie.

• 4another term for bine.