In 4–7 bande [Late ME. bande, a. F. bande ‘flat strip or strap, fascia, edge, side’; in OF. also bende = Pr. and It. benda, Lomb. binda, a. OHG. bindâ:—OTeut. *bindôn, from bindan to bind: thus ultimately cognate with BAND sb.1, with which, since the loss of final -e, it has been formally identical in English. The variant BEND, from the earlier OF. bende, is retained in Heraldry.
(Although OF. bende would of itself give a later bande, the F. and It. forms suggest that both banda and benda may have existed from the first in Romanic: see next word.)]
I. Of shape and function.
1. A strip of any material flat and thin, used to bind together, clasp or gird.
a. A hoop or fillet for putting round anything.
1483. Cath. Angl., 19. Bande of a carte, crusta, crustola.
1753. Chambers, Cycl. Supp., Band, in matters of artillery … a hoop of iron used about the carriage of a gun.
b. Bands of a saddle: two pieces of iron nailed upon the bows to hold them in their proper place.
1753. Chambers, Cycl. Supp., s.v., Besides the two great bands, the fore-bow has a small one, called the wither-band.
2. esp. A flat strip of a flexible substance (e.g., any fabric, leather, india-rubber, paper), used to bind round an object.
1611. Cotgr., Bande, a band: properly a long and narrow peece of any stuffe.
c. 1800. Mrs. Hunter, in 1001 Gems of Song (1883), 87. My mother bids me bind my hair With bands of rosy hue.
Mod. A roll of paper secured by an elastic band.
3. A flat strip or strap of the above description, forming part of, or used to confine, a dress at the waist, neck, wrists, etc., or to encircle and confine a cap, hat, or other article of apparel.
1552. Huloet, Bande or lace of a cappe or hatte, spira.
1562. J. Heywood, Prov. & Epigr. (1867), 207. Headband. smockbande.
1599. Thynne, Animadv. (1865), 21. A bande aboute oure cappes, sette with golde Buttons.
1611. Bible, Ecclus. vi. 30. Her bands are purple lace.
1841. Catlin, N. Amer. Ind., II. lv. 198. His hat-band of silver lace.
1843. Hood, Shirt, iii. Seam and gusset, and band, Band, and gusset, and seam.
1882. Mag. Art, V. 339. Full bodices with bands high up round the waists.
4. spec. a. The neck-band or collar of a shirt, orig. used to make it fit closely round the neck, afterwards expanded ornamentally. Hence, in 16th and 17th century, a collar or ruff worn round the neck by man or woman.
1568. Bible (Bishops’), Ex. xxxix. 23. With a band round about the coller that it should not rent.
1591. Florio, Sec. Fruites, 5. With what band will you have it? with a falling band.
1620. H. Fitzgeffery, Notes fr. Blackfryers. Hee is of England by his yellow Band.
c. 1625. Poems on Costume (1849), 112. With laces long and broad, As now are women’s bands.
1632. Sherwood, Eng. Fr. Dict., Band (for the necke), Collet. A falling band, Rabat. A ruffe band, Fraize.
1635. Brereton, Trav. (1844), 103. Young maids … some with broad thin shag ruffs … others with half bands.
1712. Steele, Spect., No. 264, ¶ 2. A Taylor’s Widow, who washes and can clear-starch his Bands.
1755. Smollett, Quix., II. II. i. His band was collegian, neither starched nor laced.
b. The development of a falling collar into a pair of strips (now called bands) hanging down in front, as part of a conventional dress, clerical, legal or academical.
a. 1700. Sedley, Sonn., Wks. 1722, I. 12. That fix Salvation to Short Band and Hair.
c. 1760. Gray, Candidate. Divinity heard … She stroked up her belly, and stroked down her band.
1779. Johnson, Pope, L. P. (1787), IV. 60. In a clergyman’s gown, but with a lawyer’s band.
1807. Crabbe, Par. Reg., III. 867. Careless was he of surplice, hood, and band.
1822. Nares, s.v., What was within these forty years called a band at the Universities, is now called a pair of bands.
1866. G. Macdonald, Ann. Q. Neighb., viii. (1878), 131. With my surplice and bands.
5. A strip of linen, or the like, to swathe the body or any part of it; a bandage.
1568. Bible (Bishops’), Job xxxviii. 9. I made darknesse as his swadlyng band.
1582. N. T. (Rhem.), John xi. 44. Dead, bound feete and handes with winding bandes.
1599. Shaks., Hen. V., V. ii. Cho., Henry the Sixt, in Infant Bands.
1703. Tate, Paraphr. Luke ii. All meanly wrapt in swathing bands And in a manger laid.
1751. Chambers, Cycl., s.v., A band, or roller, when applied, becomes a bandage.
6. Naut. ‘A slip of canvas stitched across a sail to strengthen the parts most liable to pressure.’
1769. Falconer, Dict. Marine (1789), Reef-band, a piece of canvas, sewed across the sail, to strengthen it in the place where the eylet-holes of the reefs are formed.
1860. Merc. Mar. Mag., VII. 114. Whip up the sail to the reef band.
7. Mech. A flat strap, belt, or other connection, passing round two wheels or shafts, by which motion is communicated from the one to the other.
1705. Hauksbee, in Phil. Trans., XXV. 2166. The small Wheel which the Band surrounds from the great one.
1801. Bloomfield, Rural T. (1802), 3. She straight slipp’d off the Wall, and Band.
1860. All Y. Round, No. 57. 162. The flying bands, the rattle of two hundred looms.
II. Of shape only, without any binding function.
† 8. A side or flitch (of bacon). [The earliest use in Eng., f. OF. bande side.]
c. 1394. P. Pl. Crede, 763. And wiþ þe bandes v.r. randes] of bakun his baly for to fillen.
[1611. Cotgr., Bande de larde, a flitch or side of bacon.]
9. Anything having the shape or appearance of a band in sense 1; esp. a flat surface with parallel sides, and of more or less breadth, running across or around an object.
1823. P. Nicholson, Pract. Build., 581. Bande or Band; a narrow flat surface, having its face in a vertical plane.
1836–9. Todd, Cycl. Anat. & Phys., II. 621/1. The bands spring from … the apicial part of the left ventricle.
1861. Parker, Introd. Goth. Archit. (1874), 319. Band, a ring round a shaft, as if to bind it to the larger pillar.
1879. H. Phillips, Add. Notes Coins, 3. Upon a band in centre extending from side to side of the medal is the sign Aquarius.
1881. Syd. Soc. Lex., Band, flattened, the cylinder-axis of white nerve fibre.
10. A more or less broad stripe, distinguished by color or aspect from the surface which it crosses; hence, a particular portion, space or region of a certain breadth crossing a surface.
1470–85. Malory, Arthur, I. xiv. With bandys of grene, and therupon gold.
1494. Fabyan, VII. 423. Iakettys or cotys of demy partye of yolowe and grene, with a bande of whyte caste ouerthwarte.
1831. Brewster, Optics, x. 86. Halfway between A and B is a group of seven or eight [lines], forming together a dark band.
1833. Lyell, Princ. Geol., III. 228. The arenaceous strata do not form one continuous band around the margin of the basin.
1857. Livingstone, Trav., xxiv. 472. We came upon another broad band of the same flower.
1865. Geikie, Scen. & Geol. Scot., xi. 297. Successive bands of dark rock and grassy slope.
1876. Geo. Eliot, Dan. Der., II. xxiii. 89. The … sunshine … came … through the windows in slanting bands of brightness.
b. Bands: a fault in flannel and serge cloth, when, from the uneven shrinking of defective weft, tight inelastic stripes occur here and there across the piece.
11. a. Ent. A transverse stripe of any color, also called fascia; b. Bot. A space between any two elevated lines or ribs on the fruit of umbelliferous plants; also called vitta.
1841. E. Newman, Hist. Brit. Ins., III. ii. 175. A fillet is a longitudinal stripe, and a band or fascia is a transverse one.
12. Geol. A stratum with a band-like section.
1837. Penny Cycl., VII. 285/2. Layers of what the miners call band … very thin beds of clay-slate.
1839. Murchison, Silur. Syst., I. xxxv. 472. A band of iron ore.
1858. Geikie, Hist. Boulder, x. 198. A mass of hard yellow calcareous shale, known to the workmen as ‘bands.’
III. Comb., as band-maker, -reel, -wimble; also band-like, -shaped adj. Band-case = BAND-BOX; band-collar (cf. 4 above); band-fish, a fish of the genus Cepola, belonging to the ribbon-shaped family of the order Acanthopteri; band-pulley, a flat-faced wheel, fixed on a shaft and driven by a band; band-saw, an endless saw, consisting of a steel belt with a serrated edge running with great speed over wheels; band-string, a string for fastening bands (see above, 4), in the 17th c. ornamented with tassels, etc. (see Fairholt, Costume, 423); band-wheel, a wheel to which motion is communicated by a band running over it. Also BAND-BOX, q.v.
1635. T. Cranley, Amanda, xliii. Within a *Band-case lies thy Ruffe.
1820. Scott, Abbot, iv. A speck of soot upon his *band-collar.
1836. Yarrell, Brit. Fishes, I. 224. Red *Bandfish, Snakefish, Ribandfish = Cepola rubescens.
1839. Todd, Cycl. Anat. & Phys., III. 769/2. A *band-like commissure.
1599. B. Jonson, Cynthia’s Rev., V. iv. This is called the solemn *band-string.
1689. Selden, Table T., 85. If a man … twirls his Bandstrings.
1691. Wood, Ath. Oxon., II. 556. He [wore] snakebone bandstrings (or bandstrings with very large tassels).
1816. Scott, Antiq., ix. Wi’ mony a button and a bandstring about it.
1407. Test. Ebor (1836), I. 347. j. mortas-wymbyll, j. *band-wymbyll, j. hoke, ii. planes.
