Other forms: bonds, bonded, bonding
A bond is the tie between people that holds when nothing is forcing it to hold. The bond between a mother and a child, the bond between two soldiers, the bond that survives twenty years and three countries.
The word does the same job in other worlds: a chemical bond holds two atoms together, and a bond on the markets is money you lend to a government and get back with interest. Glue makes a bond between two surfaces. It is a verb too — new parents bond with a baby, a class bonds on a trip, and you can bond two sheets of metal. Look at what goes round it: a strong bond, a close bond, a bond between two people, and you form or build a bond rather than making one. It is not the same as friendship — a bond can hold between two people who do not especially like each other.
1nounbondA close, lasting connection between people.~41%
“The bond between the two brothers never broke.”
synonyms: tie, attachment, connection
2verbfamilyTo form that kind of connection with somebody.~11%
“New parents bond with the baby over the first few weeks.”
3nounforceThe force holding two atoms together in a compound.~16%
“Heat is enough to break the bond between them.”
4nounmoneyMoney lent to a government or a company, paid back with interest on a fixed date.~32%
“He put his savings into government bonds.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 181 sentences found in the wild and placed 62 of them on a sense (119 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Bond is band with the vowel changed, and both go back to a root meaning to tie. Bind is the same root once more. So the bond between two people and the band round a parcel are, underneath, one thing: something tied. The Old English word covered a chain and a fetter as readily as a ribbon or a crown.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰendʰ- — to tie; bond, band
Proto-Germanic
*bandaz
Old English
beand
Middle English
bond
English, today
bond
Built from
From Middle English bond, a variant of band, from Old English beand, bænd, bend (“bond, chain, fetter, band, ribbon, ornament, chaplet, crown”), from Proto-Germanic bandaz, bandiz (“band, fetter”)، from Proto-Indo-European bʰendʰ- (“to tie; bond, band”). Cognate with Dutch band, German Band, Swedish band. a doublet of Bund. Related to bind.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA