What means "Lazy binding"?

The "Lazy binding" process describes the relocation of an library function address at run time.

That means, after the application was loaded into the virtual process memory, no library function is resolved. With this mechanism the address resolution of the needed function is done on demand. This procedure increases the startup time for applications with a long library list dramatically. The disadvantage is that the run time performance suffers, especially during the relocation process.