hidebound

Adjective

hidebound (comparative more hidebound, superlative most hidebound)

1. Bound with the hide of an animal.
   • Open the box in which his large hidebound book is kept. The faint smell of manure, over 150 years old, still rises from thick yellowing pages, and you begin to live his life.1992, Winifred Barr Rothenberg, From Market-places to a Market Economy: The Transformation of Rural Massachusetts, 1750-1850, page 58
   • But no matter where their place of residence, they were always accompanied by the hidebound chest that held the family papers.1992, T. O. Madden, We Were Always Free: A 200-Year Family History, published 2005 (reprint), page 61
2. Having the skin adhering so closely to the ribs and back as not to be easily loosened or raised; emaciated.
   • Some of the horses were looking hidebound, and I promised the sergeant that I'd buy a couple of hundredweight of linseed for them when I went on leave. Linseed was a cosy idea; it reminded me of peacetime conditions.1937, Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man (in The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston), London: Faber and Faber, page 263 (1972 paper covered edition)
3. Having the bark so close and constricting that it impedes the growth.
   • It hath been observed that hacking of trees in their bark, both downright, and across, so as you make them rather in slices than in continued hacks, doth great good to trees; and especially delivereth them from being hide-bound, and killeth their moss.1627, Francis Bacon, edited by William Rawley, Sylva Sylvarum; Or A Natural History, 9th edition, published 1670, Century V §440
4. (figuratively) Stubborn; narrow-minded; inflexible.
   • And how can a man teach with autority, which is the life of teaching, how can he be a Doctor in his book as he ought to be, or else had better be silent, whenas all he teaches, all he delivers, is but under the tuition, under the correction of his patriarchal licencer to blot or alter what...1644, Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England, archived from the original on 01 Jun 2016
   • In fact, such unfortunate persons have no resource but to become what we call Pedants; to ensconce themselves in a safe world of habitudes, of applicable or inapplicable traditions; not coveting, rather avoiding the general daylight of common-sense, as very extraneous to them and their procedure...1850 April 1, Thomas Carlyle, “No. III. Downing Street.”, in Latter-Day Pamphlets, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, page 83
5. (obsolete) Niggardly; penurious; stingy.
   • hath my purse been hidebound to my hungry brother?1644-1646, Francis Quarles, Boanerges and Barnabas