A bandage is a strip of soft cloth or other material wrapped around a wound or injury to protect it while it heals. When you scrape your knee on the playground, a bandage covers the scrape to keep dirt out and help stop the bleeding. Doctors and nurses use bandages to wrap sprained ankles, cover cuts after surgery, or hold broken bones steady until they mend.

Before modern medicine, people made bandages from whatever cloth they had available: torn sheets, strips of linen, or even spider webs in emergencies. Today's bandages range from simple adhesive strips (often called Band-Aids, though that's actually a brand name) to complex wraps that medical professionals use in hospitals.

People also use bandage as a verb: a school nurse might bandage your finger after you accidentally cut it in art class. Sometimes people say something is “just a bandage” when they mean it's a temporary fix that doesn't solve the real problem, like putting a bandage on a leaky pipe instead of actually repairing it.