hidebound

hidebound

 
adjective|HYDE-bound
 
What It Means
 
Someone or something described as hidebound is inflexible and unwilling to accept new or different ideas.
 
// Although somewhat stuffy and strict, the professor did not so completely adhere to hidebound academic tradition that he wouldn’t teach class outside on an especially lovely day.

***
hidebound
adjective
hide·;bound ;h;d-;bau;nd
Synonyms of hidebound
1
of a domestic animal : having a dry skin lacking in pliancy and adhering closely to the underlying flesh
2
: having an inflexible or ultraconservative character


Did you know?
Hidebound has its origins in agriculture. The adjective, which appeared in English in the early 17th century, originally described cattle whose skin, due to illness or poor feeding, clung to the skeleton and could not be pinched, loosened, or worked with the fingers (the adjective followed an earlier noun form referring to this condition). Hidebound was applied to humans too, to describe people afflicted with tight skin. Figurative use quickly followed, first with a meaning of “stingy” or “miserly.” That sense has since fallen out of use, but a second figurative usage, describing people who are rigid or unyielding in their actions or beliefs, lives on in our language today.

Synonyms
traditional
conservative
orthodox
Examples of hidebound in a Sentence
the hidebound innkeeper refused to see the need for a website, insisting that the inn had done without one for over 150 years
Recent Examples on the Web
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More
At times, some say, the agency has been too hidebound.
—Geoff Brumfiel, NPR, 9 May 2025
That gives them flexibility and the ability to take risks that can’t be made in more hidebound traditional schools.
—New York Daily News Editorial Board, New York Daily News, 1 May 2025
Among the more hidebound leaders of the Party, this new liberalism—call it late-Soviet wokeism—was intolerable.
—David Remnick, New Yorker, 6 Apr. 2025
Real, by contrast, are hidebound by tradition, in thrall to their history, the lofty expectations created by their glorious past hardwired into their enduring reality.
—Rory Smith, The Athletic, 10 Feb. 2025

Word History
First Known Use
1603, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler
The first known use of hidebound was in 1603
See more words from the same year
Rhymes for hidebound
aboveground
battleground
belowground
paperbound
turnaround
ultrasound
underground
wraparound
abound
aground
around
astound
Browse Nearby Words
hideaway
hidebound
hideland
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MLA
“Hidebound.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hidebound. Accessed 10 Aug. 2025.

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Kids Definition
hidebound

adjective
hide·;bound -;bau;nd
1
: having a dry skin adhering closely to the underlying flesh
a hidebound horse
2
: stubbornly unwilling to change

Medical Definition
hidebound

adjective
hide·;bound ;h;d-;bau;nd
1
: having a dry skin lacking in pliancy and adhering closely to the underlying flesh —used of domestic animals
2
: having scleroderma —used of human beings