bandage

plural bandages

1. A strip of gauze or similar material used to protect or support a wound or injury.

   […]he was deadly pale, and the blood-stained bandage round his head told that he had recently been wounded, and still more recently dressed.

   1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC

2. A strip of cloth bound round the head and eyes as a blindfold.

   The face which emerged was not reassuring. It was blunt and grey, the nose springing thick and flat from high on the frontal bone of the forehead, whilst his eyes were narrow slits of dark in a tight bandage of tissue.[…].

   1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 17, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC

   1 more example

   […] the president informed him that one of the conditions of his introduction was that he should be eternally ignorant of the place of meeting, and that he would allow his eyes to be bandaged, swearing that he would not endeavor to take off the bandage.

   1844, Alexander Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo/Chapter_75

3. broadlyfigurativelyA provisional or makeshift solution that provides insufficient coverage or relief.

   This new healthcare proposal merely applies a bandage to the current medical crisis.

present singular third person bandages · participle present bandaging · participle past bandaged · past bandaged

1. To apply a bandage to something.

   1 more example

   1879, Samuel Clemens (as Mark Twain), A Tramp Abroad, https://web.archive.org/web/20140811201712/http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/ot2www-pubeng?specfile=%2Ftexts%2Fenglish%2Fmodeng%2Fpublicsearch%2Fmodengpub.o2w ...they ate...whilst they chatted, disputed and laughed. The door to the surgeon's room stood open, meantime, but the cutting, sewing, splicing, and bandaging going on in there in plain view did not seem to disturb anyone's appetite.