Word.ws English Dictionary

time and tide

time and tide is the ellipsis of time and tide wait for no man.

Meaning of time and tide wait for no man

Proverb

time and tide wait for no man

  1. Opportunities will not wait; action should be undertaken without delay.
    • "And now", said Daniel, looking at his watch, "as time and tide wait for no man, my trusty partner, and as I am ready for starting, bag and baggage, at the gate below, let me say a last word".1857, Charles Dickens, chapter 22, in Little Dorrit

Questions about time and tide

What is time and tide the ellipsis of?
Time and tide is the ellipsis of time and tide wait for no man.

Words near time and tide in the dictionary

  1. time and methods engineering
  2. time and motion expert
  3. time and motion experts
  4. time and motion studies
  5. time and motion study
  6. time and tide
  7. time and tide stay for no man
  8. time and tide tarry for no man
  9. time and tide wait for no man
  10. time and time again
  11. time attack

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: time and tide (page history and authors); time and tide wait for no man (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.

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Cite this entry: “time and tide.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/time_and_tide. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.