Meaning & use
bound book
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Meanings
nouncountable
A book whose pages have been fastened together and enclosed in a cover, rather than left loose or stored digitally.
Grammar: Countable: you can say 'a bound book' or 'three bound books'.
Patterns
- a bound book
- bound books
- the bound book
The library keeps a bound book of every issue of the magazine.
She prefers a bound book to a stack of loose pages.
The publisher sent a bound book for final approval before printing the whole run.
nouncountable
A book that has been given a particular type of cover, such as leather or cloth, often for durability or display.
Grammar: Often used with an adjective describing the cover: 'a leather-bound book'.
Patterns
- a leather-bound book
- a cloth-bound book
- a beautifully bound book
He collected leather-bound books from the eighteenth century.
The special edition is a cloth-bound book with gold lettering.
A well-bound book can last for generations.
Word forms
| plural | bound books |
|---|
Common combinations
- leather-bound book
- The antique shop sold a leather-bound book with brass clasps.
- cloth-bound book
- Cloth-bound books were common in the nineteenth century.
- a bound book of something
- The archive has a bound book of letters from the war.
- hard-bound book
- Hard-bound books are more expensive but last longer.
Synonyms and how they differ
- hardcover
- A hardcover is a book with stiff covers; a bound book may have stiff or flexible covers, but the emphasis is on the binding process.
- volume
- A volume can be a bound book, especially one in a series, but it can also refer to a scroll or a digital file.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: bound book or bounded?
bound book vs bounded
Bounded means limited or having a boundary, as in 'a bounded area'. Bound book refers to the physical binding of pages.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'bound book' correctly?
Choose one answer.
A bound book is a physical book with pages fastened together and a cover, so option 1 fits. Option 0 is wrong because a tablet displays a digital file, not a bound book. Options 2 and 3 use 'bound book' as a verb or in an ungrammatical way.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “bound book”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.