tie

noun

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

   “Oxford ties; Derby ties”

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

5. 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.
6. A connection between people or groups of people, especially a strong connection.

   “the sacred ties of friendship or of duty”

   “the ties of allegiance; the ties that bind”

   “Occasions that reinforce the ties of kindred.”

   “No distance breaks the tie of blood.”

   “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.”

7. A structural member firmly holding two pieces together.

   “Ties work to maintain structural integrity in windstorms and earthquakes.”

8. (US)A horizontal wooden or concrete structural member that supports and ties together rails.
9. The situation in which two or more participants in a competition are placed equally.

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

10. The situation at the end of all innings of a match where both sides have the same total of runs (different from a draw).
11. (US)An equalizer, a run, goal, point, etc which causes participants in a competition to be placed equally or have the same score(s).

    “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 ...”

    “[…] 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.”

12. (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.”

13. 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.
14. (phonetic, transcription)A curved line connecting two letters (⁀), used in the IPA to denote a coarticulation, as for example /d͡ʒ/.

    “Wikipedia: tie (typography)”

15. One or more equal values or sets of equal values in the data set.
16. A bearing and distance between a lot corner or point and a benchmark or iron off site.
17. A connection between two vertices.
18. A tiewig.

    “[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

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.”

   “In bond of virtuous love together tied.”

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

   “Tie your shoes.”

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

5. (ambitransitive)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. To unite (musical notes) with a line or slur in the notation.
8. (US, colloquial, dated)To believe; to credit.

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

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

9. (transitive)In the Perl programming language, to extend (a variable) so that standard operations performed upon it invoke custom functionality instead.

   “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.”