tide over

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tide over (third-person singular simple present tides over, present participle tiding over, simple past and past participle tided over)

1. (transitive, idiomatic) To support or sustain (someone), especially financially, for a limited period.

   Could you lend me ten pounds to tide me over till payday?

   Would a small snack tide you over until dinner?

   • 1901, Henry James, The Papers:

     Each evening, it was true, when the flare of Fleet Street would have begun really to smoke, she had, in resistance to old habit, a little to hold herself; but for three successive days she tided over that crisis.

2. (transitive, obsolete outside India) To endure; weather.
   • 2001, Swami Parmeshwaranand, Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Puranas:

     I will therefore suggest a way to tide over this difficulty.

   • 1895, Marie Corelli, The Sorrows of Satan, →OCLC, page 75:

     I had a certain grim pleasure in reading letters from two or three literary men, asking for work ‘as secretary or companion,’ or failing that, for the loan of a little cash to ‘tide over present difficulties.’

• hold over
• tide through

• tideover (adj)

• overedit