also snow-bound, "shut in by a heavy fall of snow," 1814, from snow (n.) + bound (adj.1).
Entries linking to snowbound
snow n.
Middle English snou, from Old English snaw "snow, that which falls as snow; a fall of snow; a snowstorm," from Proto-Germanic *snaiwaz (source also of Old Saxon and Old High German sneo, Old Frisian and Middle Low German sne, Middle Dutch snee, Dutch sneeuw, German Schnee, Old Norse snjor, Gothic snaiws "snow"), from PIE root *sniegwh- "snow; to snow" (source also of Greek nipha, Latin nix (genitive nivis), Old Irish snechta, Irish sneachd, Welsh nyf, Lithuanian sniegas, Old Prussian snaygis, Old Church Slavonic snegu, Russian snieg', Slovak sneh "snow"). The cognate in Sanskrit, snihyati, came to mean "he gets wet."
As slang for "cocaine" it is attested from 1914.
bound adj.1
"fastened;" mid-14c. in a figurative sense of "compelled," earlier in the fuller form bounden (c. 1300), past-participle adjective from bind (v.). The meaning "under obligation" is from late 15c.; the literal sense of "made fast by tying (with fetters, chains, etc.)" is by 1550s.
In philology, designating a grammatical element which occurs only in combination with others (opposed to free), from 1926. Smyth has man-bound (1867), of a ship, "detained in port for want of a proper complement of men."