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bound up

bound up

6 6.0
Closely connected with someone or something
  • phrasal verb
translation icon : vinculado
  • My happiness is bound up with the well-being of my family.
  • inextricably bound up
  • intimately bound up
  • closely bound up

OK, but it's also bound up in faux virtue as well.

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Examples

  • Her whole world was bound up in Terry now, and Terry was going to die.

    Fiction book (1999)
  • And historically that was always bound up with music.

  • All those factors are so bound up with race, in fact.

  • So it knows that and does it and is bound up with it as with its own nature.

  • Her role might well have been bound up with the transfer of property.

    Fiction book (1994)
  • All that is very much bound up in his work on the absurd.

  • Accordingly, his responses to art were bound up with ideas about politics and history.

    Academic text (1991)
  • Even the fundamental purposes of education are inextricably bound up with the problem of freedom.

    Academic text (2003)
  • At the grassroots level, the doctrinal issues became bound up with personality and local factional disputes.

    Academic text (2000)
  • Barry was now bound up in an inextricable toil of bills and debts, of mortgages and insurances and in all the evils attendant upon them.

Synonyms

tied up
vsbound up
130 4.0

Busy with something and cannot do other things

focuses on close connection rather than being busy or unavailable
involved
vsbound up
79 3.5

Connected to something because you take part in it

applies to general connection rather than deep entanglement
wrapped up
vsbound up
  • Informal
62 4.8

Very interested and completely involved in something

means close connection but without the sense of strong obsession
joined at the hip
vsbound up
  • Informal
7 6.4

People or groups that are very close and stay together most of the time

applies to close connection generally, not only inseparable personal pairs
interconnected
vsbound up
2 4.1

Joined so each part affects and depends on the others

refers to close involvement between people or activities rather than structure
up to one's neck
vsbound up
  • Informal
2 7.9

Being very busy with a lot of difficult work or problems

is closely connected without implying overwhelm or difficulty
up to their necks
vsbound up
  • Informal
2 6.7

Very involved in a difficult or serious problem

is connected closely but not necessarily entangled or troubled
enmeshed
vsbound up
1 7.5

Caught up in something so you cannot easily leave

denotes close connection but not the trapped, hard to escape sense

Antonyms

27 5.5

A person who is not affected by personal feelings and shows little emotion

Having parts or ideas that do not fit together clearly

How Involved

obsessed
245 4.8
absorbed
3.6
bound up
6 6.0
involved
79 3.5
connected
2.5

Surface Forms

bound up positive

Morphology

bind + up

The adjective 'bound up' evokes the literal idea of being 'tied' (bound) and 'up' functions as an intensifier or directional particle, so a learner who knows the constituents can partially infer a sense of being closely tied or entangled with something. However, the figurative extension to 'deeply involved' or 'emotionally absorbed' is metaphorical and uses the prepositional pattern (bound up in/with) in an idiomatic way, so the meaning is not fully predictable for a B1 learner.

Etymology

The phrase bound up shows the picture of two things bound and up with rope, held so tightly they cannot move. So if someone is bound up with a person, job, or idea, their life is 'closely connected' to it and they are very involved.