Grounding vs. Bonding — What's Actually Different

The single most confused pair of terms in electrical work. They are not the same thing, they don't do the same job, and mixing them up is how people end up believing metal is "safe" when it isn't.

Say the words "ground" and "bond" to most people and they'll shrug — surely it's the same idea, just different jargon. It isn't. Grounding connects a system to the earth. Bondingconnects metal parts to each other. One is about a reference point. The other is about safety between things a person can actually touch. Confusing them is exactly how someone ends up assuming a "grounded" enclosure is automatically safe to touch — which, on its own, it is not.