Word.ws English Dictionary

buy in

buy in is the misspelling of buy-in.

Verb

buy in (third-person singular simple present buys in, present participle buying in, simple past and past participle bought in)

  1. To accept an idea as valid; to join in on a concept.
  2. To invest as part of a group; to put one's personal stake in an investment.
  3. To buy back for the owner at an auction.
  4. For the buyer of securities, whose seller fails to deliver the securities contracted for, to buy the securities from a third party and demand the difference in price from the original seller.
  5. To stock (something) by buying inventory from a third party.
    • They buy in coffee beans from a distributor in Carrolton.

Meaning of buy-in

Noun (1)

buy-in (countable and uncountable, plural buy-ins)

  1. Support; agreement; blessing (in a secular sense).
    • To win, I need to get buy-in from the team to have alignment with our mission.
    Synonyms:
    alignment, approval
  2. A tournament where a player must purchase all of his or her chips before the tournament starts.
  3. The amount that a player buys in for
    • When tournament players are eliminated but remain eager to win back their buy-in, side games often develop and upstage tournament play with limits exceeding those in the tournament.1983, David M. Hayano, Poker faces: the life and work of professional card players

Noun (2)

buy-in (plural buy-ins)

  1. A protest in which participants buy an item and return it soon after in order to slow down the store's operations.
    • Protests against Home Depot’s alleged involvement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) worksite raids have taken the form of disruptive “buy-ins” in at least one California store, with people lining up to purchase 17-cent ice scrapers only to return them immediately. […] According...2025 November 24, Giulia Carbonaro, “Home Depot Hit by ‘ICE Scraper’ Protest As Dozens Line Up To Buy 17¢ Item”, in Newsweek, archived from the original on 24 Nov 2025

Forms of buy in

third-person singular presentbuys in
present participlebuying in
past participlebought in
pastbought in

Words formed from buy in

Questions about buy in

What does buy in mean?
Buy in means to accept an idea as valid; to join in on a concept.
What is buy in the misspelling of?
Buy in is the misspelling of buy-in.
What part of speech is buy in?
Buy in is a verb.
What is the past tense of buy in?
The past tense of buy in is bought in.

Words near buy in in the dictionary

  1. buy boat
  2. buy boats
  3. buy cheap, buy twice
  4. buy down
  5. buy high, sell higher
  6. buy in
  7. buy into
  8. buy it
  9. buy low, sell high
  10. buy nice or buy twice
  11. buy off

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: buy in (page history and authors); buy-in (page history and authors). 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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “buy in.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/buy_in. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.