What Does “A Bind of Eels” Mean?
“Bind” conjures the image of eels physically tangled together, and that’s not far from reality: eels are known to knot themselves around each other and even around their own bodies, a behavior used for feeding leverage, twisting to tear apart prey, and possibly for evading predators.
The word likely traces back to older English fishing vocabulary, where a “bind” also referred to a specific quantity of eels sold or traded, blending the physical image with a practical unit of measurement.
Example: “A bind of eels writhed together at the bottom of the tank, impossible to tell where one ended and another began.”
Other Collective Nouns for Eels
Eels are also called a fry or a swarm. Browse the complete Collective Nouns for Fish list.
A Few Eel Facts
- Eels are catadromous, the reverse of salmon: they live in freshwater but migrate to the ocean to spawn.
- The exact spawning grounds of the American and European eel, believed to be the Sargasso Sea, were only confirmed relatively recently, and much about their breeding remains mysterious.
- Eels can absorb oxygen through their skin, allowing them to survive short trips across land between bodies of water.
Before This One Slips Away…
Tangled, twisted, and still not fully understood, eels have earned every strange word we’ve thrown at them.