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🗺️ A border ✅ Certain 📜 Obligated 🧳 Going to 🐇 To leap 🐇 A leap 🚧 To limit 📚 With a cover 🪢 Tied up 🧲 Held together 🚽 Constipated 🪙 To bounce
bound

bound

3 6.8
Held together with another substance
  • adjective
  • /baʊnd/
  • Specialized
translation icon : ligado
  • The nucleon is a highly relativistic bound state of quarks and gluons.
  • a bound state
  • bound electrons
  • bound state of quarks

Suddenly matter was no longer bound to light.

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Examples

  • Remember this bit, this bipyridine, this is the bit that's bound on to the titanium dioxide.

  • In a bound system, an electron is not free to move at will.

    Academic text (1996)

  • Suddenly matter was no longer bound to light.

    SciShow

  • Some force held her bound to the hospital.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • And it turns out that the chemical is not bound to the matrix that it's in.

  • We're all bound together and yet our world is deeply polarised.

  • And so you've got a huge chunk of material that all is bound together by gravity.

  • See, when you go from solid, you've got electrons and and neutrons bound tightly together, right?

  • It circulates here bound to DBP, a binding protein.

  • The atoms in the crystal are tightly bound together by strong ionic bonds.

Synonyms

glued
vsbound
  • Informal
1 3.0

Stuck firmly in one place or unable to stop paying attention

is held by chemical or physical forces inside the material not only by surface stickiness
tied
vsbound
1.0

Fastened with string or rope

is held by chemical or physical forces rather than by external cords or ropes

Antonyms

separate
829 2.1

Not joined to another thing and kept apart

free
  • Specialized
78 6.3

Not combined with other substances and able to move alone

unbound
  • Specialized
1 7.2

A molecule free in a liquid or blood, not attached to others

Idioms

bound hand and foot
  • Informal
7.7

Not able to act freely because rules or people stop you

Compounds

bound for
53 3.7

Going to a particular place, usually by travel

lower bound
  • Specialized
3 7.0

A value that is no larger than any number in a set

upper bound
  • Specialized
3 7.2

A number that is as big as or bigger than every number in a set

homeward-bound
1 3.9

Going toward home

outward-bound
1 5.2

Going away from a place, like a ship or train starting its journey

bound form
  • Specialized
9.6

A small part added to a word that cannot stand alone, like -s in cats and -ed in walked

bound morpheme
  • Specialized
8.6

A word part that cannot stand alone, like re- or -s

How Bound

bound
  • Specialized
3 6.8
fixed
1.0

Surface Forms

bound positive

Morphology

bound = bind (transparent) = bind + ed

The sense 'chemically/physically held together' is an extension of 'bind' (to tie or hold together), so the relation is transparent.

Etymology

In science, bound comes from bind 'to tie' and means one thing is held to another, like molecules that are 'tied' together.