bound
A sizeable jump, great leap.
Adjective not comparable, with infinitive
- Obliged (to).
- You are not legally bound to reply.
- Well, it isn't for me to say. I'm an employee of the firm and bound to stand by it. - 1927, Ernest Bramah, Max Carrados Mysteries:
- Then I had a good think on the subject of the hocussing of Cigarette, and I was reluctantly bound to admit that once again the man in the corner had found the only possible solution to the mystery. - 1904–1905, Baroness...
- That cannot stand alone as a free word.
- Constrained by a quantifier.
- Constipated; costive.
- Confined or restricted to a certain place.
- railbound
- Unable to move in certain conditions.
- snowbound
Origin
From Middle English bound, bund (preterite) and bounden, bunden, ibunden, ȝebunden (past participle), from Old English bund- and bunden, ġebunden respectively. See bind.
Forms
Antonyms
Hyponyms
book-bound culture-bound dutybound dynamic-bound earthbound egg-bound fardel-bound fluid-bound fogbound harmonically bound I/O bound inbound late-bound outbound pot-bound prison-bound railbound rootbound rulebound snowbound soulbound spiralbound strikebound timebound
Related
Derived
airbound antibound awebound barkbound bedbound boatbound boundation bound bailiff bound form bound morpheme boundness bound property bound state boundstone bound termineme bound up bound water brassbound browbound calfbound casebound cellbound chairbound cliffbound
Adjective obsolete
- Ready, prepared.
- This certain,—that a band of war / Has for two days been ready boune, / At prompt command to march from Doune […]. - 1810, The Lady of the Lake, Walter Scott, 4.III:
- Ready to start or go (to); moving in the direction (of).
- Which way are you bound? —I'm already homeward bound.
- Is that message bound for me?
- Ar. […]and for the reſt o'th' Fleet / (Which I diſpers'd) they all haue met againe, / And are vpon the Mediterranean Flote / Bound ſadly home for Naples, / Suppoſing that they ſaw the Kings ſhip wrackt, / And his great...
- Very likely (to), certain to
- They were bound to come into conflict eventually.
- When you're well enough off so's you don't have to fret about anything but your heft or your diseases you begin to get queer, I suppose. And the queerer the cure for those ailings the bigger the attraction. A place like...
- Don’t go around tonight— / Well, it’s bound to take your life: / There’s a bad moon on the rise. - 1969, Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Bad Moon Rising”:
Origin
From Middle English bownde, alternation (with -d partly for euphonic effect and partly by association with Etymology 1 above) of Middle English boun, from Old Norse búinn, past participle of búa (“to prepare”).
Forms
Related
Derived
Noun Entry 3
- A sizeable jump, great leap.
- The deer crossed the stream in a single bound.
- A spring from one foot to the other in dancing.
- A bounce; a rebound.
- Balzo, a bound of a ball - 1598, John Florio, “Balzo”, in A Worlde of Words, or Most Copious, and Exact Dictionarie in Italian and English, […], London: […] Arnold Hatfield for Edw[ard] Blount, →OCLC:
Origin
From Middle English *bounden (attested as bounten), from French bondir (“leap", "bound", originally "make a loud resounding noise”); perhaps from Late Latin bombitāre (“hum, buzz”), frequentative verb, from Latin bombus (“a humming or buzzing”).
Forms
Derived
Noun often
- A boundary, the border which one must cross in order to enter or leave a territory.
- I reached the northern bound of my property, took a deep breath and walked on.
- Somewhere within these bounds you may find a buried treasure.
- Wyth cry unreverent, Before the sacrament, Wythin the holy church bowndis, That of our fayth the grownd is. - c. 1503–1512, John Skelton, Ware the Hauke; republished in John Scattergood, editor, John Skelton: The...
- A value which is known to be greater or smaller than a given set of values.
Origin
From Middle English bounde, from Old French bunne, from Medieval Latin bodina, earlier butina (“a bound, limit”).
Forms
Derived
Bekenstein bound boundary Bound Brook boundless boundsgoer Chapman-Robbins bound Cramér-Rao bound disbound Hammersley-Chapman-Robbins bound harmonic bounding least upper bound lower bound metes and bounds out of bounds overbound Tsirelson bound upper bound within bounds zero lower bound
Verb Entry 5
- To leap, move by jumping.
- The rabbit bounded down the lane.
- But when I turn away, / Thou, willing me to stay, / Wooest not, nor vainly wranglest; / But, looking fixedly the while, / All my bounding heart entanglest, / In a golden-netted smile; […] - 1842, Alfred Tennyson,...
- They make love, he hauls her to the bath, washes her, hauls her out and dries her, and twenty minutes later Mary and Magnus are bounding across the little park on the top of Döbling like the happy couple they nearly...
Synonyms: lollop
- To cause to leap.
- to bound a horse
- […] Or if I might buffet for my Loue, or bound my Horſe for her fauours, I could lay on like a Butcher, and fit like a Iack an Apes, neuer off. - , Act V, Scene II, page 93
- To rebound; to bounce.
- A rubber ball bounds on the floor.
- To cause to rebound; to throw so that it will rebound; to bounce.
- to bound a ball on the floor
Forms
Derived
Verb Entry 6
- To surround a territory or other geographical entity; to form the boundary of.
- grounds bounded on three sides by a river.
- France, Portugal, Gibraltar and Andorra bound Spain.
- Kansas is bounded by Nebraska on the north, Missouri on the east, Oklahoma on the south and Colorado on the west.
- To be the bound of.
Origin
From Middle English bounden, from the noun (see above).
Forms
Derived
Verb form of, participle
- simple past and past participle of bind
- I bound the splint to my leg.
- I had bound the splint with duct tape.
- The maidens have bound silver snoods about their hair, with gold spangles, and pendent flames (Flammen), that is, sparkling hair-drops : but of their mother's headgear who shall speak? - 1831, Thomas Carlyle,...