bide
Americanverb (used with object)
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bides,
present (3rd person singular)
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bided,
past participle, past
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bode,
past (Archaic)
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bid,
past participle (Archaic)
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biding
present participle
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Archaic. to endure; bear.
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Obsolete. to encounter.
verb (used without object)
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bides,
present (3rd person singular)
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bided,
past participle, past
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bode,
past (Archaic)
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bid,
past participle (Archaic)
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biding
present participle
idioms
verb
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archaic (intr) to continue in a certain place or state; stay
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archaic (intr) to live; dwell
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archaic (tr) to tolerate; endure
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to stay a little
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to abide by
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to wait patiently for an opportunity
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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bidesimple
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bidessimple
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have bidperfect
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have bidedperfect
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has bidperfect
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has bidedperfect
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am bidingprogressive
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are bidingprogressive
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is bidingprogressive
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have been bidingperfect progressive
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has been bidingperfect progressive
Past
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bidedsimple
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bodesimple
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had bidperfect
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had bidedperfect
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was bidingprogressive
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were bidingprogressive
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had been bidingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of bide
before 900; Middle English biden, Old English bīdan; cognate with Old Frisian bīdia, Old Saxon bīdan, Old High German bītan, Old Norse bītha, Gothic beidan, Latin fīdere, Greek peíthesthai to trust, rely < Indo-European *bheidh-; the meaning apparently developed: have trust > endure > wait > abide > remain
Explanation
When you bide, you remain somewhere. You'd be wise to bide a while inside and wait for the rain to stop before you leave! The verb bide is extremely old-fashioned, but you may be familiar with it from expressions like "bide your time" and businesses named "Bide-a-Wee." It comes from the Old English bidan, "to stay, continue, or remain." When you bide your time, you wait until a good opportunity comes up: "I'll bide my time until I find the perfect rescue dog." As for "bide-a-wee," that's a Scottish phrase meaning "stay a while."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Young centre-backs McConville, 21, and Tom Atcheson, 20, looked ready to play at this level, while Ciaron Brown started all four games and drew plaudits having often had to bide his time in past squads.
From BBC ● Oct. 5, 2026
This debt doesn’t necessarily mean you are “trapped,” but you may have to bide your time to make sure the door doesn’t hit you — hard — on the way out.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 5, 2026
Investors may bide their time until there are more concrete details about SpaceX’s financials.
From Barron's ● Apr. 3, 2026
She said the lieutenant governor’s role is typically a sleepy perch for politicians as they bide their time to run for higher office.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 12, 2026
He would bide his time, make them think he was content to remain here . . . and then, when they had grown lax, he would be off again.
From "A Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin
Henry bides his time, watching other subjects closely before befriending Eleven.
From BBC ● Nov. 26, 2025
But if the host cell is lucky, maybe the virus simply settles into this cozy outpost—either going dormant or back-engineering its little genome into the host’s genome—and bides its time.
From National Geographic ● Jan. 14, 2021
But she still usually bides her time, letting other Justices have their say before homing in calmly, yet relentlessly, on weaknesses that she’s identified in an argument.
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 11, 2019
Fittingly, Philippe bides his time before getting to the chest-burster scene, and he teases us with the possibility that he might not even show it at all.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 3, 2019
You think you have hidden it, but it bides its time and comes up later, causing a lot of trouble.
From The Wolves of God And Other Fey Stories by Algernon Blackwood
Your aunt, for better or for worse, bided her time.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 9, 2026
For two-thirds of Sunday’s Long Beach Grand Prix, Alex Palou bided his time … waiting for the one break he needed.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 19, 2026
That country, which once hid its strength and bided its time, has decided under Xi Jinping to “flex its muscles.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 16, 2026
Newby toned it down and bided his time.
From Salon ● Oct. 31, 2025
They could have bided their time until the borders eventually reopened or gone through legal channels to get us green cards before we left Iran, but that would have likely taken years.
From "Americanized" by Sara Saedi
Although the announcements bode well for the industry, Bill Birmingham, the head of research at Rex Financial, noted that they are mostly focused on setting standards for now.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 12, 2026
Clear communication has been a major challenge with the Tatas, which does not bode well for the public markets, according to Dalal.
From BBC ● Aug. 23, 2026
“With the MOF joining forces with the U.S. Treasury and vowing to intervene, even a slightly softer CPI report could bode well for USD/JPY bears,” Simpson adds.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 11, 2026
The results should bode well for both investors’ and borrowers’ confidence in the financial system.
From Barron's ● Jun. 24, 2026
Mother’s nerves are very much on edge, and that doesn’t bode well for me.
From "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank
The Alphabet-owned streamer is working on a feature for audiobooks, a bid to compete with offerings from Spotify and Audible.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2026
"After studying the proposals, the government has chosen Lufthansa, whose financial offer was 16 percent higher than the competing bid," Montenegro said.
From Barron's ● Oct. 14, 2026
The county faced no opposition to its bid for the point-in-time count and the regional application, but the city submitted competing bids for the database and matching system.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 14, 2026
The following year when Singapore saw a bad bout of haze, authorities issued summonses to several Indonesian companies thought to have cleared land by burning, in a bid to prosecute them under the new law.
From BBC ● Oct. 13, 2026
Twenty minutes passed, when according to Leah, the raps spelled out, “We will now bid you farewell.”
From "American Spirits" by Barb Rosenstock
Meanwhile, Marset has been biding his time in jail.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 23, 2026
Many supporters are biding their time until the next election.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 24, 2026
Either way, it looks like Streeting is biding his time, meaning a drawn-out battle.
From BBC ● May 15, 2026
In reality, he was simply biding his time.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 28, 2026
There are still plenty out here, biding their time, pretending they’ve seen the error of their ways....
From "Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban" by J.K. Rowling
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