bound for
47
3.7
- adjective
- All aboard, St. Louis, this train is bound for Atlanta.
- train bound for London
- plane bound for New York
- ship bound for Australia
Examples
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I have booked passage on a cargo ship bound for England.
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The St. Louis set sail from the Hamburg-Amerika docks on May 13, bound for Cuba.
Academic text (2017) -
There is a plane bound for Berlin tomorrow evening.
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We picked up 50 boxes of experimental earth... ...bound for London, England.
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On the train bound for Manhattan, I thought I should have at least hugged him.
Fiction book (1998) -
She was bound for London with a cargo of cotton in her hold.
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Most of the immigrants came from the north of Ireland bound for New York, Philadelphia, and Quebec.
Academic text (1991) -
There was a very young girl from Denmark... who took passage on a steamer bound for Suez.
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In Halifax, the trio boarded the mail steamer Alpha, bound for St. George, Bermuda.
Fiction book (1998) -
The train is bound for New York, leaving in just a few minutes.
Synonyms
155
4.1
Sure to happen or meant to be sent to a certain place
3
3.9
Going toward home
How Certain
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'on the way to / destined for' is directly built from 'bound' (destined/intending) plus the preposition 'for' marking destination, so the composite meaning is predictable from the parts. This adjective + preposition pattern is a standard, cross-linguistically common way to indicate destination, making it readily understandable to a B1 learner who knows both constituents.
Etymology
Bound for comes from old travel talk: people described a ship or coach as bound to a place, as if it already had a set direction to go. So bound for means 'on the way to' or 'meant to go to' a particular place.