[f. BOUND sb.1; not found before the end of 14th c. Cf. OF. bonner, now borner:—med.L. bodināre, bonāre, bundāre.]
† 1. trans. To set bounds to, limit; to confine within bounds; to mark (out) the bounds of. Obs.
1393. Gower, Conf., III. 103. Was [Asia] that time bounded So, Wher … Nile … falleth Into the see Alexandrine.
1523. Fitzherb., Surv., Prol. All these maners … shulde be … bounded and valued in euery parte.
1602. Warner, Alb. Eng., Epit. (1612), 358. Caritick with his Britons … were lastly chased and bounded by them from out all parts.
1603. Knolles, Hist. Turks (1638), To Rdr. And with his word boundeth in the raging of the sea.
1623. Bingham, Xenophon, 135. Before they had parcelled, and bounded out the ground.
1667. Milton, P. L., XII. 370. He shall … bound his Reign With earth’s wide bounds.
1762. Falconer, Shipwr., II. 228. In vain he … bounds the distance by the rules of art.
b. fig.
1393. Gower, Conf., I. 218. God … hath al thinge bounded.
1554. Act 1 & 2 Phil. & Mary, viii. § 38. Such whose Right, Title or Interest is bounded or taken away.
1647. Answ. Lett. to Dr. Turner, 19. The Apostles … did in their latter dayes … bound out that power which still we do call Episcopacy.
1690. Locke, Hum. Und., I. iv. § 12. Exercise of his Faculties was bounded within the Ways, Modes, and Notions of his own Country.
1799. Mackintosh, Bacon & Locke, Wks. 1846, I. 329. Such facts bound our researches in every part of knowledge.
1842. H. E. Manning, Serm. (1848), I. xi. 151. It makes a man … bound himself about by his own horizon.
1850. Mrs. Jameson, Leg. Monast. Ord., 3. His views were not bounded by any narrow ideas of expediency.
† c. intr. To limit itself; be limited. Obs. rare.
1673. [Mrs. Behn], To Dk. Buckingham, in Chorus Poetarum, 78.
| Nor Bounds thy Praise to Albion’s narrow Coast, | |
| Thy Gallantry shall foreign Nations boast. |
2. trans. To form the boundary of.
1601. Holland, Pliny, I. 73. Lecheum of the one hand, and Cenchræa of the other, do bound out and limit the said streights.
1622–62. Heylin, Cosmogr., III. (1673), 1/1. Asia is bounded on the West, with the Mediterranean.
1824. W. Irving, T. Trav., I. 257. A line of blue hills that bounded the landscape.
1879. Froude, Cæsar, xxi. 351. He crossed the little river Rubicon, which bounded his province.
1884. Bower & Scott, De Bary’s Phaner. & Ferns, 37. The cavity … is … bounded by the lateral walls of the neighbouring … cells.
† b. To enclose, confine, contain; also with in.
1595. Shaks., John, II. i. 431. Whose veines bound richer blood then Lady Blanch? Ibid. (1606), Tr. & Cr., IV. v. 129. My Mothers bloud Runs in the dexter cheeke, and this sinister Bounds in my fathers.
3. intr. To bound on: to abut upon, adjoin. To bound with: to have the same boundaries as. arch.
c. 1570. Thynne, Pride & Lowl. (1841), 10. These breeches I did bound on on eyther side.
1601. Holland, Pliny, I. 109. Troas … bounds on the coast of Hellespontus.
1622. Callis, Stat. Sewers (1647), 87. The Banks … belong to the subject, whose lands do but and bound thereon.
1637. Earl Monm., trans. Malvezzi’s Romulus & Tarquin, 241. Bounding upon madness, it [melancholy] brings men to sublimity.
1792. T. Jefferson, Corr., 164. They bound on us between two and three thousand miles.
1858. Beveridge, Hist. India, III. 269. Territories … bounding with those of British India on the west.
