Bidding Means Offering a Price — or Doing What You Are Told
Bidding is the act of making offers at an auction or for a contract. In an older sense it means a command, which survives in the phrase do someone's bidding.
Bidding carries two lives. In commerce it is the offering of prices, competitive and public. In older English it is an order given, and that sense is now confined to a handful of phrases. Both come from the same verb, bid, which once meant to command as naturally as it now means to offer.
- Making offers at an auction. *Bidding opened at ten thousand.*
- Competing for a contract. *Three firms took part in the bidding.*
- A command (older). *She did his bidding without question.*
- Declaring in a card game. *The bidding stopped at four hearts.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | bidding | Brisk bidding. |
| Verb | bid | She bid twice. |
| Past | bid / bade | He bid 500. He bade her farewell. |
| Person | bidder | The highest bidder. |
| Compound | bidding war | A bidding war broke out. |
How it is used in a sentence
- Bidding closes at noon on Friday.Used for auctions and for tenders alike.
- The house went to the highest bidder.Highest bidder is a fixed phrase.
- He was only doing his master's bidding.The command sense, now slightly literary.
Two past tenses, two meanings
- Bid — for offers: *he bid twenty pounds*, *she has bid already*
- Bade — for commands and greetings: *she bade him goodnight*
- Using *bade* at an auction sounds wrong; using *bid* for a farewell sounds modern but is widely accepted
- The split is one of the neatest survivals of an older grammar in everyday English
The modern verb merges two Old English verbs, *beodan* (to offer, to announce) and *biddan* (to ask, to pray). Centuries of sound change pulled them into one shape, and the meanings have been sharing a spelling ever since.
What is a bidding war?
A contest where rival buyers keep raising their offers, pushing the price well above the expected level.
Is do my bidding rude?
It sounds imperious and is usually said as a joke. In serious use it suggests someone acting purely on orders.