hidebound

comparative more hidebound · superlative most hidebound · alternative uncommon hide-bound

1. Bound with the hide of an animal.

   But no matter where their place of residence, they were always accompanied by the hidebound chest that held the family papers.

   1992, T. O. Madden, We Were Always Free: A 200-Year Family History, published 2005 (reprint), page 61

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   Open the box in which his large hidebound book is kept. The faint smell of manure, over 150 years old, still rises from thick yellowing pages, and you begin to live his life.

   1992, Winifred Barr Rothenberg, From Market-places to a Market Economy: The Transformation of Rural Massachusetts, 1750-1850, page 58

2. Having the skin adhering so closely to the ribs and back as not to be easily loosened or raised; emaciated.

   Some of the horses were looking hidebound, and I promised the sergeant that I'd buy a couple of hundredweight of linseed for them when I went on leave. Linseed was a cosy idea; it reminded me of peacetime conditions.

   1937, Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man (in The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston), London: Faber and Faber, page 263 (1972 paper covered edition)

3. Having the bark so close and constricting that it impedes the growth.

   It hath been observed that hacking of trees in their bark, both downright, and across, so as you make them rather in slices than in continued hacks, doth great good to trees; and especially delivereth them from being hide-bound, and killeth their moss.

   1627, Francis Bacon, edited by William Rawley, Sylva Sylvarum; Or A Natural History, 9th edition, published 1670, Century V §440

4. figurativelyStubborn; narrow-minded; inflexible.

   After earlier years when the family had been accused of being stuffy and hidebound, members now started behaving as though they were in a never-ending soap opera.

   2022 September 8, Stephen Bates, “Queen Elizabeth II obituary”, in The Guardian

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   And how can a man teach with autority, which is the life of teaching, how can he be a Doctor in his book as he ought to be, or else had better be silent, whenas all he teaches, all he delivers, is but under the tuition, under the correction of his patriarchal licencer to blot or alter what precisely accords not with the hidebound humor which he calls his judgement.

   1644, Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England, archived from the original on 01 Jun 2016

   In fact, such unfortunate persons have no resource but to become what we call Pedants; to ensconce themselves in a safe world of habitudes, of applicable or inapplicable traditions; not coveting, rather avoiding the general daylight of common-sense, as very extraneous to them and their procedure; by long persistence in which course they become Completed Pedants, hidebound, impenetrable, able to defy the hostile extraneous element; an alarming kind of men

   1850 April 1, Thomas Carlyle, “No. III. Downing Street.”, in Latter-Day Pamphlets, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, page 83

   Oh, I know he's a good fellow—you needn't frown—an excellent fellow, and I always mean to see more of him; but a hide-bound pedant for all that; an ignorant blatant pedant.

   1886 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Dr. Jekyll Was Quite at Ease”, in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, page 31

   But things change; class distinctions were not always so hard and fast as they have now become. The Elizabethan age was far more elastic in this respect than our own; we, on the other hand, are far less hide-bound than the Victorians.

   1932, Virginia Woolf, “The Niece of an Earl”, in The Common ReaderFirst and Second Series Combined in One Volume, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, published 1948, →OCLC

   That optimistic baby had come on so like the private eye in any long-ago radio drama, believing all you needed was grit, resourcefulness, exemption from hidebound cops' rules, to solve any great mystery.

   1966 March, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 5, in The Crying of Lot 49, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, published November 1976, →ISBN, page 91

5. obsoleteNiggardly; penurious; stingy.

   1644-1646, Francis Quarles, Boanerges and Barnabas hath my purse been hidebound to my hungry brother?