Other forms: bindings
A binding is the cover and stitching that hold a book together. A leather binding, the binding has split, rebind the book.
Case binding is the hardback method, and perfect binding is the glued paperback one, which fails after about a decade. A book's binding is often worth more than its text to collectors. As an adjective, binding means legally enforceable: a binding agreement, binding arbitration — which is the sense that appears in contracts. Note bindings, which on skis are the fittings that hold the boot.
1nounbindingThe cover and stitching that hold a book together.
“The binding has held for about two hundred years.”
2adjectiveenforceableLegally enforceable.
“Once you sign the contract, it is legally binding.”
binding is a holding together.
Old English bindan is Germanic and gives bind, band, bond and bundle. A binding holds a book the way a bond holds a promise, and the legal sense is the same word rather than a metaphor.
Middle English
byndynge
English, today
binding
From Middle English byndynge. From Middle English byndynge; equivalent to bind + -ing.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA