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A bindle is a small bag or sack used for carrying personal belongings.

Bindles are stereotypically depicted in American culture as a cloth bundle tied to the end of a stick and carried over the shoulder by hobos, especially in imagery of the Great Depression.^[1] In this way, the weight of the burden is transferred to the shoulder, which allowed for a longer-lasting and more comfortable grip, which was especially useful with larger and heavier loads. One example of the stick-type bindle can be seen in the illustration entitled The Runaway created by Norman Rockwell for the cover of the September 20, 1958, edition of The Saturday Evening Post.^[2]

In cartoons, the bindles' sacks usually have a polka-dot or bandanna design. Though bindles are practically gone, they are still widely seen in popular culture as a prevalent anachronism.

A hobo who carried a bindle was known as a bindlestiff. According to James Blish in his novel A Life for the Stars, a bindlestiff was specifically a hobo who had stolen another hobo's bindle, from the colloquialism stiff, as in steal.^{[page needed]}

The term bindle may be an alteration of the term "bundle" or similarly descend from the German word Bündel, meaning something wrapped up in a blanket and bound by cord for carrying (cf. originally Middle Dutch bundel), or have arisen as a portmanteau of bind and spindle.^[3] It may also be from the Scottish dialectal bindle "cord or rope to bind things".^[4]

Bindle is also a term used in forensics. It is the name for a piece of paper folded into an envelope or packet to hold trace evidence: hairs, fibers or powders.^[5] Similarly, bindle is sometimes used to describe a small package of powdered drugs.

• Carrying pole
• Sarcina

Look up bindle in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• "Folding a Paper Bindle", 2017, National Forensic Technology Training Center.
• "Paper Evidence Fold", 2014, VDFS, Virginia.