betide

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English bitīden, formed from Middle English bi- + tīden (“to happen”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} with the prefix be- as an intensifier.^[7] The simple verb tīden is from Old English tīdan (“to happen, befall”),^[5][7][8] from tīd (“time, season”), the source of tide.^[7][3] Middle English also had itide, with the same meaning, from Old English getidan,^[3] and Stratmann took the prefixed verb as standing for it.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

To happen to someone, with a dative object: about 1175, in the Lambeth Homilies.^[2] Dictionary.com gives 1125–75,^[6] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates the transitive sense to before the 12th century.^[10] Etymonline instead puts "to happen, come to pass" in the late 12th century and the transitive sense in the early 13th.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The word was common in Middle English for what happens or befalls, by itself or impersonally: Chaucer has it 94 times and Gower 55.^[11] The Middle English Dictionary records what-so bitide, come what may,^[5] and Etymonline itide what bitide, from about 1300.^[3] The wish woe betide is first found in Langland's Piers Plowman (1393), in the line "Er ich wedde such a wif wo me bytyde",^[2][12] and began as a curse, though it is now usually a warning.^[13] The word also meant "to become of" from before 1400 to 1676,^[2] "to fall to as a possession" from before 1400 to 1588,^[2] and briefly, around 1555–66, "to become or befit".^[2] A past participle meaning "circumstanced, beset" is recorded from 1470,^[2] and the noun betide, a chance or event, in 1590 only, in R. Greene.^[2] Johnson (1755) gave it as "to happen to; to befal; to bechance; whether good or bad",^[14] with the Fairy Queen line "What great misfortune hath betid this knight?".^[14] A sense "to bode, betoken", which Merriam-Webster Unabridged still lists, appears before 1799 in Cowper.^[2][10] By 1921 Weekley found it only in whate'er betide and woe betide.^[12]

Timeline

• c. 1175 – to happen to someone.^[2]
• 1297 – intransitive, to happen, befall.^[2]
• 1393 – in a wish, wo me bytyde, the source of woe betide.^[2][12]
• before 1400 – to become of (obsolete by 1676).^[2]
• 1470 – past participle, circumstanced, beset.^[2]
• 1590 – noun, an event or chance (recorded this once).^[2]
• before 1799 – to bode, betoken.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To happen to; to befall, now mostly in the warning woe betide: Woe betide anyone who borrows my bicycle.^[10][15][2]
2. To happen, come to pass: She would finish the climb, whatever might betide.^[10][15][2]
3. To forebode or presage.^[10][2]
4. (obsolete, before 1400–1676) To become of a person or thing; to be the fate of.^[10][2]

Related words

• tide
• tidings

Usage notes

It is used now only in the infinitive and the third person, mostly in the present subjunctive.^[13][12] The past forms are betided and the archaic betid.^[10][13]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
6. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ a b c Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
9. ^ Stratmann, Francis Henry (1891), A Middle-English Dictionary, revised by Henry Bradley, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
11. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
12. ^ a b c d Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
13. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
15. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins