Bind is a great name. When you have a function that takes a monadic value of type `m a` (e.g. List[A_] in scala I think) it becomes convenient to program with l

Bind is a great name. When you have a function that takes a monadic value of type `m a` (e.g. List[A_] in scala I think) it becomes convenient to program with lambda functions. For list comprehension, you can program like this (python notation now, since everyone reads it): bind(list_of_xs, lambda x: bind(list_of_ys, lambda y: return(x+y))) That's a list comprehension. You bind the monadic values (list_of_xs) to element values (x). On lines 2 and 3, you can think of x as a bound variable that was assigned to one of the elements of list_of_xs on line 1. Then we "assign" y on line 2, and it's in scope on line 3. "Assign" would have also been a decent name for it. It's way more intuitive for me to think of those three lines as assigning/binding x and y to be summed together, rather than thinking of one flatmap of a lambda to flatmap of a final lambda to a function. The abstraction of variable binding just fits.