These words refer to the winding and knotting of rope or a similar material round someone to prevent free movement or to the connecting of two things by such devices. Tie is the most general of these words in its ability to refer to either situation with the fewest specific restrictions in meaning: He tied up his victims with torn lengths of bedsheets; tying one end of the guy rope to a low-hanging branch. Bind also can apply in both these situations, but it specifically emphasizes a tight tying : binding and gagging his captive so that he could neither move nor speak; a string binding the rhubarb stalks into a bunch. Truss is considerably more informal than any of the other words here and is also alone in referring exclusively to the tying up of someone to prevent free movement: prisoners of war who had been trussed up back to back and guarded until the convoy arrived. The word goes beyond tie in this sense to suggest an extremely tight, careful or uncomfortable doubling up and binding of the arms and legs against the body, like a fowl prepared for roasting.

The rest of these words pertain mostly to the connecting of two things by some such means as a rope or wire. Of these, fasten and secure are the most general, even when limited to connections accomplished by tying . Fasten suggests a firm tying in which the elements connected are made incapable of independent motion: He fastened an arrowhead to the shaft with a tough thong. Secure emphasizes the inseparability of the elements connected, but does not suggest loss of independent movement: the ends of the hammock were secured to two well-spaced trees.

Lash , hitch and moor are all considerably more specific in implication. Lash here is similar to bind in its area of meaning, stressing a firm tying together, especially in a nautical setting: lashing the sail to the yardarm; He lashed himself to the mast so that he could not respond to the singing of the Sirens. Hitch particularly stresses the joining together of two mobile things or vehicles: They hitched the stalled car to the tow-truck with a long chain. Moor , like lash , has a nautical context, but it is even more specific in stressing the tying of a boat or ship to something immovable: mooring the canoe to a heavy boulder on the bank.