bend

USBEND/bɛnd/

Noun pluralbends

25 meanings of bend

1
verbintransitive
To become curved; to take on a curved or arched shape.
Steel beams bend slightly under heavy loads.
The shelf has bent under the weight of all those books.
Similarsag, bow, buckle, flex, curve
Oppositestraighten
2
verbtransitive
To make something take on a curved shape, whether by physical force, chemical action, or some other means.
Plumbers bend copper pipes to fit around tight corners.
The intense heat bent the steel girders out of shape.
Similarcurve, twist, warp, buckle, flex
Oppositestraighten
Note
The physical meaning the rest of the word grows from, though its roots lie in tying. Old English bendan meant to bind as well as to bend a bow, and it goes back to a root meaning "to bind, tie." The past tense and past participle are bent (she bent the wire; the pipe is bent). Bended is archaic, so keep it out of ordinary prose.
3
nouncountable
A curve or curved section, as in a road, river, or pipe.
The truck slowed as it approached a sharp bend in the highway.
The plumber installed a ninety-degree bend beneath the sink.
Similarcurve, turn, corner, elbow
Oppositestraight
Note
Sharp and round are its everyday companions. Johnny Cash's train in "Folsom Prison Blues" (1968) is heard approaching around one. A road can have a bend, but a path can also make one. Joseph C. Lincoln's Mr. Pratt's Patients (1913) has a track that "made a sudden bend," a useful verb when the curve is part of a journey rather than a fixed feature.
4
verbintransitive
To change direction; to turn away from a straight course.
Light rays bend as they pass from air into water.
The highway bends sharply just before the tunnel.
Similarcurve, turn, veer, swing
5
verbtransitive
To cause something to change its direction of movement or travel.
Prisms bend white light into a band of separate colors.
The magnet bent the electron beam toward the detector.
Similardeflect, refract, divert
Note
Older writers turned the senses and the journey as readily as objects. Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) has "Bend thine ear to supplication." Shakespeare's Third Part of Henry the Sixth has "Towards Coventry bend we our course." Scott's The Antiquary (1816) has "bending her eyes on the floor." Bend one's ear, course or eyes now reads as literary. In everyday modern use the sense is mostly about light and beams being turned.
6
verbintransitive
To stoop; to incline the body forward and downward.
Gardeners bend for hours while weeding the flower beds.
He bent over the engine, searching for the loose wire.
Similarstoop, crouch, lean
Oppositestraighten
Note
Usually it comes with down: he bent down to pick up the pieces. Down marks the drop toward the floor. Over adds something to lean across, as in bent over the engine. The bare verb is enough when the stooping itself is the point. All three stay intransitive, because nothing is bent but the subject's own body.
7
verbintransitive
To bow in prayer, or as a sign of submission or respect.
Worshippers bend in silent prayer at the start of the service.
Every courtier bent as the emperor entered the hall.
Similarbow, kneel
8
verbtransitive
To force a person or group to submit or give way.
Authoritarian leaders bend courts and newspapers to their will.
The empire bent conquered peoples to its laws and language.
Similarsubject
Note
Its natural home is the phrase bend someone to one's will, as in "They bent me to their will." Mass Effect 3: Leviathan (2012) turns it around with "a galaxy that bends to your will." That version is intransitive, which is the yielding meaning: the powerful bend others, and the others bend. When writing, choose the transitive form for the one applying force and the intransitive for the one giving way.
9
verbintransitive
To submit; to yield to pressure or another's will.
Strong unions rarely bend during the first weeks of a strike.
After months of protests, the government finally bent.
Similaryield, submit, relent, give, capitulate
Oppositeresist
10
verbintransitive
To apply oneself earnestly to a task or purpose.
Once the harvest begins, entire families bend to the work from dawn to dusk.
Researchers across the world bent to the problem of the new disease.
Similarturn

11
verbtransitive
To apply or direct one's mind, efforts, or resources to a task or purpose.
Great athletes bend every habit of daily life to their training.
The agency bent its entire budget to the relief effort.
Similardevote, apply, direct, dedicate
Note
What gets bent here is usually something inward, such as the mind, thoughts or will. William Temple's essay on gout (1679) describes a minister no longer able "to bend his mind or thoughts to any Publick Business." Pope's The Rape of the Lock (1714) has mortals who "to mischief… bend their will." The goal follows to, as a noun or an -ing form: bent the company's resources to gaining market share.
12
verbtransitive
To adapt or interpret something to suit a particular purpose or to favor someone.
Lawyers sometimes bend a statute's wording to fit their client's case.
Officials bent the zoning guidelines to accommodate the developer.
Similartwist, stretch, distort
Note
It is the polite way to accuse someone of shading the truth without calling it a lie. Demetrios Katos's Palladius of Helenopolis: The Origenist Advocate (2011) makes the distinction exactly: "Palladius did not lie, although he might have bent the facts a bit." The object is something meant to stay fixed, such as facts, wording or guidelines. The verb says it was stretched to serve a purpose, not broken outright.
13
verbintransitive
To be inclined in a particular direction; to direct itself toward something.
In winter, the conversations in the village bend toward the past.
His steps bent toward the harbor, though he had no errand there.
Similarturn, incline, tend, drift
14
verbtransitive
To change the pitch of a note smoothly, sliding it up or down rather than jumping between fixed pitches.
Blues guitarists bend notes by pushing the string sideways across the fretboard.
The harmonica player bent each note at the end of the phrase.
Note
A performer's technique: the note slides rather than steps, usually by less than a whole tone. Guitarists displace the string, wind players adjust the embouchure, and synthesizer players reach for a pitch wheel. The verb takes the note as its object and can say how far it goes: bend the G slightly sharp. The sound that results is the noun bend.
15
nouncountable
A glide between one pitch and another, especially one produced by pushing a guitar string sideways to raise its pitch.
The solo opens with a slow bend from the seventh fret.
Her signature bends gave the melody a vocal, expressive quality.
Note
The guitarist's noun, made from the pitch-sliding verb. A fretted string pushed sideways tightens and rises, anywhere from a quarter tone to a third or more. Players describe a bend by its speed and its starting point, as in a slow bend from the seventh fret. Glissando is the general musical term, and bend is the word for the guitar version.
16
nounplural
A severe condition caused by an overly rapid drop in pressure, as when a diver surfaces too fast, causing nitrogen bubbles to form in the blood; decompression sickness.
Divers make scheduled stops on the way up to avoid the bends.
He spent six hours in a hyperbaric chamber after a mild case of the bends.
Note
It is always plural and always takes the: a diver gets the bends, or a mild case of the bends, never "a bend." Divers and doctors both use the name. Decompression sickness is the formal equivalent and the better choice in clinical or technical writing.
17
nouncountable
Any of various knots used to join the ends of two ropes or lines together.
The instructor showed us a bend that joins two ropes of unequal thickness.
Sailors learn several bends so they can join lines quickly in rough weather.
Note
Ropework sorts knots by their job, and a bend is the one that unites the ends of two separate lines. A hitch secures a line to an object, and a loop forms a fixed eye. Percy W. Blandford's Practical Knots and Ropework (2012) writes of "the common bend," used in one form to join binder twine. The name fits the word's origin in binding, traced under the curving verb.
18
verbtransitive
To tie or make fast, as in securing a line to a cleat or shackling a chain to an anchor.
Deckhands bend the mooring lines to the cleats before the storm arrives.
She bent a spare halyard to the sail and hoisted it.
Similartie, fasten, secure, attach, hitch
Oppositeuntie
Note
Sailors keep the word's oldest meaning alive. Elsewhere bending means curving, but on a ship it means fastening, close to Old English bendan, "to bind." A crew bends a sail to a yard, a line to a cleat, a chain to an anchor. The pattern is nearly always bend something to something. The same seafaring sense of joining explains the knot that unites two lines.
19
verbintransitive
To swing the body forward and back with each stroke when rowing.
Novice rowers often bend too early, before the blade enters the water.
The whole eight bent in perfect unison down the final stretch.
Note
It is a rower's word, and it is the body that bends, not the oar. The trunk swings toward the stern on the recovery and toward the bow on the drive, timed with the legs and arms. It is used without an object: a crew bends together, and a novice bends too early.
20
nouncountable
In heraldry, a broad diagonal band on a shield running from the upper corner on the bearer's right to the lower corner on the left, one of the honorable ordinaries.
The family arms feature a silver bend on a blue field.
Heralds describe bends as engrailed or wavy when their edges are patterned.
Note
In blazon the word follows the field's tincture and precedes its own: the Scrope arms are "Azure a bend Or," a gold bend on blue. Charles MacKinnon of Dunakin's The Observer's Book of Heraldry (1968) calls them perhaps the most celebrated arms of all. Scrope and Grosvenor contested them before the High Court of Chivalry from 1385 to 1390. Uncharged, a bend fills about a fifth of the shield; charged, a third.
21
noununcountable
Hard, indurated clay of the kind encountered in mine workings; also called bind.
The seam ran out where it met a band of bend.
Progress slowed to a few feet a day once the workers cut into solid bend.
Similarbind
Note
Coal workings meet it between or above the seams, a clay so indurated that digging slows to a crawl. Bind is its other name. In mining prose it is a material noun, a band of bend or solid bend, and has nothing to do with the curving senses. It is a layer of rock, not a turn in one.
22
nouncountable
In the leather trade, sole leather of the best quality, cut from a butt; sometimes specifically half a butt cut lengthwise.
The cobbler cut new soles from a bend hanging at the back of the shop.
Tanneries graded each bend before shipping it to the bootmakers.
23
nouncountableplural
The thickest and strongest planks in a wooden ship's sides, more commonly called wales, to which the beams, knees, and futtocks are bolted.
Shipwrights bolted the deck beams directly to the bends along each side.
A cannonball lodged in the bend just above the waterline.
Similarwale
Note
It is shipwrights' vocabulary, used in the plural. The bends are the heavy strakes of side planking, more often called wales, running fore and aft to give the hull its lengthwise strength. Don't confuse them with the ribs of the hull, also called bends, which run across the ship from keel to the top of the sides.
24
nouncountableplural
One of the frames or ribs that form a ship's body, rising from the keel to the top of the sides.
The shipwright set up the midship bend first to govern the hull's shape.
Once all the bends stood in place, planking could begin.
Similarframe, rib
Note
The midship bend is the broadest frame and fixes the vessel's greatest breadth, which is why it governs the hull's shape. Each bend is a whole transverse frame, rising from keel to the top of the side. The lengthwise timbers it meets are the heavy side planking.
25
nounobsolete
A turn or inclination of the mind; a purpose, aim, or end one is set upon.
Nothing could move him from his bend once he had fixed upon the journey.
Farewell, poor swain; thou art not for my bend.
1608, John Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess
Note
Long obsolete, it survives in early drama such as John Fletcher's The Faithful Shepherdess (1608). There a speaker says "Farewell, poor swain; thou art not for my bend," meaning not suited to my purpose. It is the noun that answers the verb of inclining. Outside deliberate pastiche, modern writing should use inclination, purpose or aim.

Practice

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Origin

From Middle English benden, from Old English bendan ("to bind or bend a bow, to fetter, restrain"), going back through Proto-Germanic to the Proto-Indo-European root *bʰendʰ- ("to bind, tie"). It is related to bind, band, and bond.