Bidder

How to spell bidder

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce bidder

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bidder mean?

1. nounA person who offers a price for something, especially at an auction or in a competitive tender.

Bidder in a sentence

• The highest bidder won the antique clock at auction.

• Each bidder was asked to register before the sale began.

Where does bidder come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word is the agent form of the verb 'bid', which descends from two Old English verbs that eventually merged: 'biddan', meaning 'to ask, pray, or demand', and 'beodan', meaning 'to offer or announce'. The auction sense of 'bid', namely offering a sum of money, grew out of the 'offer' strand of that pair. By the sixteenth century English speakers were forming 'bidder' with the agent suffix '-er' to name the person who makes an offer, especially at a sale by competitive offers. The doubled 'd' is the routine English habit of doubling a single final consonant after a short stressed vowel before adding a suffix, the same pattern seen in 'runner' and 'winner'. Because the root is a plain Germanic everyday verb, the spelling has stayed simple and stable for centuries.

How the word is built

• bid (to offer a price)
• -er (agent suffix; the final consonant doubles after a short stressed vowel)