bind down

bind (something or someone) down

To anchor or fasten something or someone in place. You need to bind down the shed in the back yard before the big storm. Can you please bind down the baby in her highchair?
See also: bind, down
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

bind someone or something down

to tie or secure someone or something to something. Bind the tarpaulin so it won't get away. We will bind down the patient tightly. They bound the hatch down so it could not be opened.
See also: bind, down
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • bind (something or someone) down
  • belt down
  • belt down (something or someone)
  • be down to (do something)
  • be down to something
  • bog
  • bog down
  • bogged down
  • bear down
  • be down to somebody/something
References in classic literature
It's enough to make one mad to hear volks talk; if I was going to marry myself, then she would ha reason to cry and to blubber; but, on the contrary, han't I offered to bind down my land in such a manner, that I could not marry if I would, seeing as narro' woman upon earth would ha me.
But this is the custom: for if the law were to bind down a free and independent citizen to keep his word with the public, what would become of the liberty of the subject?
To artificially bind down a constitution on the basis of a doctrine such as that expounded by the Indian Supreme Court would be a gross disservice to the development of constitutional law.
If this is too high, your amplifying primers can't bind down on their priming sites as effectively as possible, reducing your maximal per-cycle efficiency and leading to a "slow" (low slope) phase 2 area.
never had the right to legislate for the future, to enthrall and bind down those who came after them either by debt or any other system of legislation which would prevent them from a perfect freedom of action." The solution was to take the debt-making power from the legislature: The 1846 state constitution required a vote of the people before any debt could be issued.
To ensure good behavior, the slaveholder relies on the whip; to induce proper humility, he relies on the whip; to rebuke what he is pleased to term insolence, he relies on the whip; to supply the place of wages, as an incentive to toil, he relies on the whip; to bind down the spirit of the slave, to imbrute and destroy his manhood, he relies on the whip.
That the oath taken at the start of each session of Congress is meant to bind down elected officials with the document's chains?
As James Madison advised us, we must "hear no more talk of trust in man, but bind him down with the chains of the Constitution." We must bind down all branches of the government with the chains of the Constitution.
And so we have to anticipate that, and so we take steps now to make sure that we're not in a situation that we're in a bind down the road.
It is one of the great chains intended to bind down the giant European Gulliver while the Lilliputians in Brus sels celebrate not just peace in our time but peace for all time.
It is precisely individuals like Pastor and Slaughter--and their fellow globalists inside of and outside of government--whom Jefferson admonished that we should bind down "from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
The Constitution itself, described by Jefferson as the "chains" to "bind down from mischief" ambitious.
They would, as Jefferson put it, bind down with chains those who govern to keep them from mischief.