Bid
adv, noun, verb, slang ·Common ·Middle school level
Definitions
- 1 Acronym of business improvement district. abbreviation, acronym, alt-of
- 2 An offer at an auction, or to carry out a piece of work.
"His bid was $35,000."
- 3 an attempt to get something wordnet
- 4 A (failed) attempt to receive or intercept a pass.
"Nice bid!"
- 5 (bridge) the number of tricks a bridge player is willing to contract to make wordnet
Show 5 more definitions
- 6 An attempt, effort, or pursuit (of a goal).
"Their efforts represented a sincere bid for success."
- 7 a formal proposal to buy at a specified price wordnet
- 8 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."
- 9 an authoritative direction or instruction to do something wordnet
- 10 A prison sentence. slang
"So we ‘lawyered up’. That’s how they say it in the bucket, son, where I did an eight-hour bid."
- 1 To issue a command; to tell. transitive
"He bade me come in."
- 2 To make an offer to pay or accept a certain price. intransitive
"Have you ever bid in an auction?"
- 3 ask for or request earnestly wordnet
- 4 To invite; to summon. transitive
"She was bidden to the wedding."
- 5 To offer as a price; to tender. transitive
"She bid £2000 for the Persian carpet."
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- 6 ask someone in a friendly way to do something wordnet
- 7 To utter a greeting or salutation. transitive
"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; […]"
- 8 To make an attempt. intransitive
"He was bidding for the chance to coach his team to victory once again."
- 9 invoke upon wordnet
- 10 To proclaim (a bede, prayer); to pray. obsolete
"All night she spent in bidding of her bedes, / And all the day in doing good and godly deedes."
- 11 To announce (one's goal), before starting play. ambitransitive
- 12 make a serious effort to attain something wordnet
- 13 To take a particular route regularly. intransitive, transitive
"I can’t believe he bid the Syracuse turn; that can be brutal in the winter!"
- 14 propose a payment wordnet
- 15 make a demand, as for a card or a suit or a show of hands wordnet
- 1 twice a day, two times per day not-comparable
"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."
Example
More examples"When Sony came back with a 2 billion bid, CBS could not refuse."
Etymology
From Latin bis in diē.
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.
Related phrases
More for "bid"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.