bid
/bɪd/
bid verb: to issue a command; to tell.
Verb (1)
bid (third-person singular simple present bids, present participle bidding, simple past bid or bade or (archaic) bad, past participle bid or bade or (archaic) bad or bidden)
- To issue a command; to tell.
- He bade me come in.
- Shylock: [...] Why Jessica, I say!
Launcelot: Why, Jessica!
Shylock: Who bids thee call? I do not bid thee call.
Launcelot: Your worship was wont to tell me that I could do nothing without bidding.c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
- To invite; to summon.
- She was bidden to the wedding.
- Jessica: Call you? What is your will?
Shylock: I am bid forth to supper, Jessica: / [...] But wherefore should I go? / I am not bid for love; they flatter me;c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
- To utter a greeting or salutation.
- Portia: If I could bid the fifth welcome with so good heart as I / can bid the other four farewell, I should be glad of his / approach; […]c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
- The last train—a three-coach A.E.C. unit—from Belfast to Crumlin and back, was bade farewell with fog signals as it carried a capacity crowd of last-trip travellers.1960 November, L. Hyland, “The Irish Scene”, in Trains Illustrated, page 691
- To proclaim (a bede, prayer); to pray.
- All night she spent in bidding of her bedes, / And all the day in doing good and godly deedes.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
Verb (2)
bid (third-person singular simple present bids, present participle bidding, simple past and past participle bid)
- To make an offer to pay or accept a certain price.
- Have you ever bid in an auction?
- To offer as a price; to tender.
- She bid £2000 for the Persian carpet.
- To make an attempt.
- He was bidding for the chance to coach his team to victory once again.
- To announce (one's goal), before starting play.
- To take a particular route regularly.
- I can’t believe he bid the Syracuse turn; that can be brutal in the winter!
Noun (1)
bid (plural bids)
- An offer at an auction, or to carry out a piece of work.
- His bid was $35,000.
- The company tendered a bid for a lucrative transport contract.
- A (failed) attempt to receive or intercept a pass.
- Nice bid!
- An attempt, effort, or pursuit (of a goal).
- Their efforts represented a sincere bid for success.
- She put in her bid for the presidency.
- A particular route that a driver regularly takes from their domicile.
- I can’t stand this new bid I’m on, even if the mileage is better.
- A prison sentence.
- So we ‘lawyered up’. That’s how they say it in the bucket, son, where I did an eight-hour bid.2007, Psych (TV series)
- Synonyms:
- bit
Adverb capitalized: BID
BID (not comparable)
- twice a day, two times per day
- It has been repeatedly documented that moving patients from a TID dosing regimen to BID or OD vastly improves compliance, and thus the medicine's effectiveness.2014 April, Ken. Seufert, “The New Dawn of Pharmaceutical Manufacturing: Innovative Solutions for Unprecedented Challenges”, in American Pharmaceutical Review
Noun (2) capitalized: BID
BID (plural BIDs)
- Acronym of business improvement district.
bid meaning in Hindi, Bengali, Kannada and Punjabi
bid in Hindi
- बोली लगाना
bid in Bengali
- দরপত্র দিতে
bid in Kannada
- ಬಿಡ್ ಮಾಡಲು
bid in Punjabi
- ਬੋਲੀ ਲਗਾਉਣਾ, ਬੋਲੀ ਲਗਾਉਣ ਲਈ
More languagesFewer languages
- bid in Gujarati
- બિડ કરવા માટે
- bid in Nepali
- बोली लगाउनुहोस्, बोली लगाउनका निम्ति
- bid in Tagalog
- tampa
- bid in Arabic
- عَرْض ʕarḍ, عَطَاء ʕaṭāʔ
- bid in Persian
- دو زن داری
- bid in Thai
- ประมูล bprà-muun
- bid in Vietnamese
- sự đặt giá, sự trả giá
Examples of bid in a sentence
- He put in his bid for office.
- In his cloak of words strode the ringmaster, / Bid me join the parade1970, King Crimson, “Cirkus (including "Entry of the Chameleons")”, in Lizard:
- Then, as the Sunderland fans' cheers bellowed around the stadium, United's title bid was over when it became apparent City had pinched a last-gasp winner to seal their first title in 44 years.2012 May 13, Alistair Magowan, “Sunderland 0-1 Man Utd”, in BBC Sport:
- He was swinging east again making another bid for Arcade.1967 May, William F. Nolan, George Clayton Johnson, Logan's Run, Bantam Books, published 1976, →ISBN, page 16:
Synonyms of bid
Forms of bid
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | bids |
| present participle | bidding |
| past | bid |
| past | bade |
| past participle | bid |
| past participle | bade |
| past participle | bidden |
| past (archaic) | bad |
| past participle (archaic) | bad |
| Noun | |
| plural | bids |
| plural | BIDs |
Origin of bid
From Middle English bidden, from Old English biddan (“to ask, demand”), from Proto-West Germanic *biddjan, from Proto-Germanic *bidjaną (“to ask”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷʰedʰ-. Conflated with Old English bēodan (“to offer, announce”) (see Etymology 2 below). Compare West Frisian bidde, Low German bidden, Dutch bidden ("to pray"), German bitten, Danish bede, Norwegian Bokmål be.
From Middle English beden, from Old English bēodan (“to offer, announce”), from Proto-Germanic *beudaną (“to offer”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰewdʰ- (“be awake, aware”). Conflated with Old English biddan (“to ask, demand”) (see Etymology 1 above). Compare Low German bieden, beden, Dutch bieden, German bieten, Danish byde, Norwegian Bokmål by. More at bede.
Borrowed from Latin bis in diē.
Words formed from bid
- bid adieu
- bid beads
- biddability
- biddable
- bid defiance to
- bid down
- bid fair
- bid in
- bid off
- bid up
- forbid
- misbid
- outbid
- what am I bid
- counterbid
- overbid
- prebid
- rebid
- underbid
- upbid
- autobid
- beadle
- bid-ask spread
- biddance
- bid hook
- bid price
- bid rigging
- bid shading
- bid size
- bid wanted
- bid whist
- bidworthy
- commission bid
- cuebid
- donkey bid
- dummy bid
- leadership bid
- limit bid
- megabid
- psychic bid
- sealed bid
- straw bid
- takeover bid
- vendor bid
Phrases with bid
Words that rhyme with bid
Questions about bid
- What does bid mean?
- Bid means to issue a command; to tell.
- What is bid in Hindi?
- Bid in Hindi is बोली लगाना. See Bid meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use bid in a sentence?
- He put in his bid for office.
- What part of speech is bid?
- Bid can be a verb, a noun or an adverb.
- How do you pronounce bid?
- Bid is pronounced /bɪd/.
- What is the past tense of bid?
- The past tense of bid is bid.
Words near bid in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bid (page history and authors); BID (page history and authors); bid (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bid (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bid (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bid (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bid (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bid (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-bid.ogg.
Cite this entry: “bid.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bid. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.