tie

Noun

tie (plural ties)

2. A knot; a fastening.
3. A knot of hair, as at the back of a wig.
5. A necktie (item of clothing consisting of a strip of cloth tied around the neck). See also bow tie, black tie.

   Synonym: necktie

7. A lace-up shoe.

   Oxford ties; Derby ties

   Coordinate term: court shoe

   • 1919, Henry B[lake] Fuller, “Cope Makes a Sunday Afternoon Call”, in Bertram Cope’s Year: A Novel, Chicago, Ill.: Ralph Fletcher Seymour, The Alderbrink Press, →OCLC, page 24:

     […] the tip of her russet boot almost grazed that of his Oxford tie.

9. A twist tie, a piece of wire embedded in paper, strip of plastic with ratchets, or similar object which is wound around something and tightened.
11. A connection between people or groups of people, especially a strong connection.

    Synonym: bond

    the sacred ties of friendship or of duty

    the ties of allegiance; the ties that bind

    • 1866, Charlotte Mary Yonge, The Prince and the Page:

      No distance breaks the tie of blood.

    • 1983 December 31, Gary Phillips, “Gays in Gaol [Jail]: Who Cares”, in Gay Community News, volume 11, number 24, page 15:

      In most states the court view is that if a person rents (and particularly if it is only a room), does not have a car, does not live within a nuclear family unit, is not established in full-time employment, then that person is considered to be without ties and an itinerant and therefore ought not to be granted bail.

    • 2004, Peter Bondanella, chapter 4, in Hollywood Italians: Dagos, Palookas, Romeos, Wise Guys, and Sopranos, pages 231–232:

      The film ends with the colorful deaths of Nico's enemies after he thwarts their attempts to assassinate a U.S. Senator investigating ties between drug dealers and the CIA.

13. (construction) A structural member firmly holding two pieces together.

    Hyponym: tiebar

    Ties work to maintain structural integrity in windstorms and earthquakes.

    

15. (rail transport, US) A horizontal wooden or concrete structural member that supports and ties together rails.

    Synonym: (British) sleeper

17. The situation in which two or more participants in a competition are placed equally.

    Synonym: draw

    Hyponym: stalemate

    It's two outs in the bottom of the ninth, tie score.

19. (cricket) The situation at the end of all innings of a match where both sides have the same total of runs (different from a draw).

    Coordinate term: draw

21. (sports, US) An equalizer, a run, goal, point, etc which causes participants in a competition to be placed equally or have the same score(s).
    • 2010, Scott Glabb, A Saint in the City: Coaching At-risk Kids to Be Champions, Tate Publishing, →ISBN, page 146:

      I thought José was still a point down. I thought he needed another takedown to tie and pull ahead, so I ordered José to let his man up. I looked up too late, realizing that José already scored a tie. By that point, the New Jersey champion got his ...

    • 1971, Budapress News Service, Budapress Bulletin, volume 10, issues 27-52, page 8:

      […] game in the championships shouldering a vast disadvantage and was in due course defeated by Egyetértés, one of the newcomers in the first league. Eger, the other novice in the championships, also took off successfully scoring a tie with the Ruha ETO.

22. (sports, British) A meeting between two players or teams in a competition.

    The FA Cup third round tie between Liverpool and Cardiff was their first meeting in the competition since 1957.

24. (music) A curved line connecting two notes of the same pitch denoting that they should be played as a single note with the combined length of both notes.

    Coordinate term: slur

26. (phonetic transcription) A curved line connecting two letters (⁀), used in the IPA to denote a coarticulation, as for example /d͡ʒ/.

    Wikipedia: tie (typography)

28. (statistics) One or more equal values or sets of equal values in the data set.
30. (surveying) A bearing and distance between a lot corner or point and a benchmark or iron off site.
32. (graph theory) A connection between two vertices.
34. A tiewig.
    • 1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC:

      [H]e ordered his boarders and apartments to be dished out for the occasion, spared no pains in adorning his own person, and in particular employed a whole hour in adjusting a voluminous tye, in which he proposed to make his appearance.

Verb

tie (third-person singular simple present ties, present participle tying, simple past and past participle tied)

1. (transitive) To twist (a string, rope, or the like) around itself securely.

   Tie this rope in a knot for me, please.

   Tie the rope to this tree.

2. (transitive) To form (a knot or the like) in a string or the like.

   Tie a knot in this rope for me, please.

3. (transitive) To attach or fasten (one thing to another) by string or the like.

   Tie him to the tree.

   • 1600, [Torquato Tasso], “(please specify |book=1 to 20)”, in Edward Fairefax [i.e., Edward Fairfax], transl., Godfrey of Bulloigne, or The Recouerie of Ierusalem. […], London: […] Ar[nold] Hatfield, for I[saac] Iaggard and M[atthew] Lownes, →OCLC:

     In bond of virtuous love together tied.

4. (transitive, sometimes figurative) To secure (something) by string or the like.

   Tie your shoes.

   • 1660, [John] Dryden, Astraea Redux:

     Not tied to rules of policy, you find / Revenge less sweet than a forgiving mind.

5. (transitive, intransitive) To have the same score or position as another in a competition or ordering.

   They tied for third place.

   They tied the game.

6. (US, transitive) To have the same score or position as (another) in a competition or ordering.

   He tied me for third place.

7. (music) To unite (musical notes) with a line or slur in the notation.
8. (US, dated, colloquial) To believe; to credit.
   • 1929, Collier's, volume 84, page 56:

     […] It seems they have sort of betrothal teas — can you tie it?"
     "Heavens!" said Mary […]

   • 1940, Woman's Home Companion, volume 67, numbers 1-4, page 134:

     As the door slammed Pete turned to Hally, fuming. "Can you tie that? A little twopenny cold frightening him off."

9. (programming, transitive) In the Perl programming language, to extend (a variable) so that standard operations performed upon it invoke custom functionality instead.
   • 2000, Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, Jon Orwant, Programming Perl: 3rd Edition, page 814:

     So, a class for tying a hash to an ISAM implementation might provide an extra method to traverse a set of keys sequentially (the “S” of ISAM), since your typical DBM implementation can't do that.

Conjugation

Related terms

• tie stille

Usage notes

When combined with ĉi, the adverbial particle of proximity, tie ĉi means here.

Derived terms

• ĉi tie, tie ĉi
• tiea
• tieulo

Related terms

• kie
• ie
• nenie

Declension

Derived terms

Usage notes

• Transcriptions of Mandarin into the Latin script often do not distinguish between the critical tonal differences employed in the Mandarin language, using words such as this one without indication of tone.