bind / bīnd/ • v. (past and past part. bound ) [tr.] 1. tie or fasten (something) tightly. ∎  restrain (someone) by the tying up of hands and feet. 2. cause (people) to feel that they belong together: the comradeship that bound such a disparate bunch together. ∎  (bind someone to) cause someone to feel strongly attached to (a person or place). ∎  cohere or cause to cohere in a single mass: [tr.] with the protection of trees to bind soil [intr.] clay is chiefly tiny soil particles that bind together. ∎  cause (ingredients) to cohere by adding another ingredient. ∎  cause (painting pigments) to form a smooth medium by mixing them with oil. ∎  hold by chemical bonding. ∎  [intr.] (bind to) combine with (a substance) through chemical bonding: these proteins bind to calmodulin. 3. formal impose a legal or contractual obligation on. ∎  (bind oneself) formal make a contractual or enforceable undertaking. ∎  (be bound by) be hampered or constrained by. 4. fix together and enclose (the pages of a book) in a cover. • n. 1. a problematical situation. 2. formal a statutory constraint. 3. Mus. another term for tie. PHRASAL VERBS: bind someone over (usu. be bound over) (of a court of law) require someone to fulfill an obligation, typically by paying a sum of money as surety.

bind To resolve the interpretation of some name used in a program for the remaining lifetime of that instance of the program. For example, upon invocation of a procedure the formal parameters are bound to the actual parameters that are supplied for that invocation, and this binding remains in force throughout the lifetime of that invocation. Similarly, at some time the variables in a program must be bound to particular storage addresses in the computer, and this binding typically remains in force for as long as the variable continues to exist. In a virtual memory system, there is further binding between the virtual addresses used in the program and the physical addresses of the hardware.

For an abstract specification, the implementation will involve binding to a language. For example, the PCTE specification is available in C and Ada language bindings, each having a binding to UNIX.

bind OE. bindan, pt. band, bundon, pp. bunden = OS. bindan, OHG. bintan (G. binden), ON. binda, Goth. bindan :- Gmc. *bendan. f. IE. base *bhendh- (Skr. bandh bind).
Hence binder OE. (of books XVI); whence bindery XIX (orig. U.S.), after Du. binderij.

bind To add liquid, fat, or egg to a mixture to hold it together. See also panada.

Bind

a unit of measurement for salmon or eels.

Examples: bind of eels [ten strike or sticks, i.e., 250 eels], 1667; bind of salmon [fourteen gallons].