hidebound

Adjective

1. Bound with the hide of an animal.
   • Open the box in which his large hidebound book is kept. The faint smell of manure, over 150 years old, still rises from thick yellowing pages, and you begin to live his life. - 1992, Winifred Barr Rothenberg, From...
   • But no matter where their place of residence, they were always accompanied by the hidebound chest that held the family papers. - 1992, T. O. Madden, We Were Always Free: A 200-Year Family History, published 2005...
2. Having the skin adhering so closely to the ribs and back as not to be easily loosened or raised; emaciated.
   • Some of the horses were looking hidebound, and I promised the sergeant that I'd buy a couple of hundredweight of linseed for them when I went on leave. Linseed was a cosy idea; it reminded me of peacetime conditions. -...
3. Having the bark so close and constricting that it impedes the growth.
   • It hath been observed that hacking of trees in their bark, both downright, and across, so as you make them rather in slices than in continued hacks, doth great good to trees; and especially delivereth them from being...
4. Stubborn; narrow-minded; inflexible.
   • And how can a man teach with autority, which is the life of teaching, how can he be a Doctor in his book as he ought to be, or else had better be silent, whenas all he teaches, all he delivers, is but under the tuition,...
   • In fact, such unfortunate persons have no resource but to become what we call Pedants; to ensconce themselves in a safe world of habitudes, of applicable or inapplicable traditions; not coveting, rather avoiding the...
   • Oh, I know he's a good fellow—you needn't frown—an excellent fellow, and I always mean to see more of him; but a hide-bound pedant for all that; an ignorant blatant pedant. - 1886 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Dr....
5. Niggardly; penurious; stingy.
   • 1644-1646, Francis Quarles, Boanerges and Barnabas hath my purse been hidebound to my hungry brother?