From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishbe tied to/by somethingbe tied to/by somethingto be restricted by a particular situation, job etc, so that you cannot do exactly what you want Many women felt tied to the house.be tied to doing something I didn’t want to be tied to commuting to London. With children, you’re tied by school holidays. → tie
Examples from the Corpus
be tied to doing something• All but two of its visible nodes will be tied to the output of cells on a retina.• All were tied to their product and its relation to the wing flying mission.• But time is tied to the wrist or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.• Much of the crooked trading is tied to mergers and acquisitions, which reached record levels last year.• Serfs were tied to the land and the great landowners did largely as they pleased.• She was tied to a sacrificial altar.• Weights can be tied to the scaffolds to pull the branches down to create these angles. 