MEANING
To provide enough temporary help for someone to manage until their situation improves.
Use it for
helping someone through a temporary shortage; providing money until payday; supplying enough to last until more arrives; bridging a short difficult periodMakes clear that help bridges a temporary shortage rather than permanently solving the problem. Writing functions: Temporary support through difficulty. Semantic categories (by meaning): Temporary support; Difficulty; Resources. Contexts: General conversation; Creative prose.
On the page
The small grant tided the theatre over until ticket sales recovered.
A sandwich should tide you over until dinner.
Word forms
- Base
- tide over
- Past tense
- tided over
- Past participle
- tided over
- Present participle
- tiding over
Full tense & aspect guide
- Present
- tide over
- Present continuous
- am/is/are tiding over
- Present perfect
- have/has tided over
- Present perfect continuous
- have/has been tiding over
- Past
- tided over
- Past continuous
- was/were tiding over
- Past perfect
- had tided over
- Past perfect continuous
- had been tiding over
- Future
- will tide over
- Future continuous
- will be tiding over
- Future perfect
- will have tided over
- Future perfect continuous
- will have been tiding over
Choose the auxiliary that agrees with your subject. These are constructions of one word, not separate entries.
Usage notes
Transitive: tide someone over; tide them over; tide someone over until a time. Forms: tides over; tided over; tided over; tiding over. The person or group receives the help. Register: neutral. Commonness: moderately common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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