hidebound

adjective more hidebound · most hidebound · hide-bound

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.
2. of a domestic animal 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.
3. of trees 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.
4. figuratively, of a person 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 precisely
5. obsolete Niggardly; penurious; stingy. 1644-1646, Francis Quarles, Boanerges and Barnabas hath my purse been hidebound to my hungry brother?