the.com/bind
The knot between freedom and function — tying things together always costs something.
means To tie, fasten, or hold things together — or, in its harder sense, to be legally or morally obligated to something.
from From Old English 'bindan,' a sturdy Germanic verb for tying or fettering, traceable back through Proto-Germanic to the ancient Indo-European root 'bhendh-' meaning to bind — the same root that gives English 'bundle,' 'band,' and 'bond.' The word has always carried both senses at once: rope around a bundle of sticks, and the invisible rope of a promise or law. 'In a bind' as a phrase for being stuck first shows up in the 1800s, extending the literal tightness of a knot to the figurative squeeze of a dilemma.
- legal sense
- A contract binds you the same way rope does
- chemistry
- Atoms bind by sharing electrons, not glue
- programming
- Binding a variable just means giving it a value
- old phrase
- In a bind meant literally stuck, now means stressed