Tide

How to spell tide

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tide

What does tide mean?

1. nounThe regular rise and fall of the sea caused by the gravitational pull of the moon and sun.
2. verbTo help someone get through a difficult period, usually with a temporary supply of money or resources.

Tide in a sentence

• noun

  The tide comes in twice a day along this stretch of coast.

• verb

  A small loan should tide us over until payday.

• noun

  Fishermen check the tide tables before setting out at dawn.

• verb

  These savings will tide the family over during the slow winter months.

Where does tide come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Tide comes from the Old English word tīd, which originally meant 'time', 'period', or 'season' rather than anything to do with the sea. It belongs to the wider Germanic family and is a close cousin of the German word Zeit, also meaning 'time'. For centuries an English tide was simply a stretch of time, a survival you can still hear in old words like 'Yuletide' and 'Eastertide', and in the saying 'time and tide wait for no man', where the two words once meant nearly the same thing. By the 1300s the meaning narrowed toward the regular, clock-like rising and falling of the sea, because those movements were tied to fixed times of the day. The spelling kept the simple Old English form, which is exactly why it sounds identical to 'tied', the past tense of 'tie', and why the two are so easily swapped in writing.

How the word is built

• tide (from Old English tīd: time, period, season)

Words that sound like tide

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• tied: Past tense of 'tie': fastened or secured something with a cord, string, or knot.