Bait

How to spell bait

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bait

What does bait mean?

1. nounFood or another lure placed on a hook or in a trap to attract fish or animals.
2. verbTo deliberately taunt or provoke someone, or to put a lure on a hook or trap.

Bait in a sentence

• noun

  The angler threaded a fresh worm onto the hook as bait.

• verb

  The trolls online try to bait people into pointless arguments.

• noun

  The pest controller set poisoned bait behind the kitchen cupboards.

• verb

  He liked to bait his younger brother until he lost his temper.

Where does bait come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Bait comes from the Old Norse word beita, which literally meant 'to cause to bite' and also referred to pasture or food used to feed or lure animals. That noun was closely tied to the verb bita, 'to bite', and English speakers borrowed it during the Viking-influenced period before the 1300s. The link to biting is the heart of its meaning: bait is food set out so that a fish or animal will bite. Over time the word stretched beyond fishing and hunting to mean any tempting lure, and as a verb it gained the sense of tormenting or provoking, as in setting dogs on a tethered animal. The spelling trap is the homophone bate (as in 'with bated breath'), an unrelated word about holding back or lessening, so the two are easily swapped in writing.

How the word is built

• bait (single root from Old Norse beita: to cause to bite); no prefix or suffix