binding

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The action of one that binds.
2. n. Something that binds or is used as a binder.
3. n. The cover that holds together the pages of a book.
4. n. A strip sewn or attached over or along an edge for protection, reinforcement, or ornamentation.
5. n. Sports Fastenings on a ski for securing the boot.
6. adj. Serving to bind.
7. adj. Uncomfortably tight and confining.
8. adj. Imposing or commanding adherence to a commitment, an obligation, or a duty: binding arbitration; a binding agreement.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. Serving to bind, fasten, or connect; making fast.
2. Having power to bind or oblige; obligatory: as, a binding engagement.
3. Astringent.
4. Causing constipation; constipating.
5. n. The act or action of making fast, securing, uniting, etc., in any sense of the verb bind: as, the binding of prisoners; wire that serves for binding.
6. n. Anything that binds; a bandage; the cover of a book, with the sewing and accompanying work; something that secures the edges of cloth or of a garment.
7. n. In fencing, a method of securing the adversary's sword, consisting in crossing it with a pressure, accompanied with a spring of the wrist.
8. n. plural In ship-building, the beams, transoms, knees, wales, keelson, and other chief timbers used for connecting and strengthening the various parts of a vessel. Also called binders.
9. n. The condition assumed by adhesive soils in hot dry seasons; a similar condition in the soil of flowerpots in which plants have been kept too long or too dry; closeness, dryness, or hardness of texture.
10. n. In machinery, the prevention of free motion in one part of a machine by the sagging or any deviation from a straight line of another portion.
11. n. A projection of a part of a structure or machine by which parts intended to touch are prevented from coming into perfect contact.
12. n. Nautical, a wrought-iron ring around a dead-eye.

Wiktionary

1. adj. Assigning something that one will be held to.
2. n. An item (usually rope, tape, or string) used to hold two or more things together.
3. n. The spine of a book where the pages are held together.
4. n. sewing A finishing on a seam or hem of a garment
5. n. programming The association of a named item with an element of a program.
6. v. present participle of bind.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. adj. That binds; obligatory.
2. n. The act or process of one who, or that which, binds.
3. n. Anything that binds; a bandage; the cover of a book, or the cover with the sewing, etc.; something that secures the edge of cloth from raveling.
4. n. (Naut.) The transoms, knees, beams, keelson, and other chief timbers used for connecting and strengthening the parts of a vessel.

WordNet 3.0

1. adj. executed with proper legal authority
2. n. the protective covering on the front, back, and spine of a book
3. n. one of a pair of mechanical devices that are attached to a ski and that will grip a ski boot; the bindings should release in case of a fall
4. n. strip sewn over or along an edge for reinforcement or decoration
5. n. the capacity to attract and hold something
6. n. the act of applying a bandage