Tide Over

Tide over

Meaning

Make a small allowance (of money, food etc.) last until stocks are replenished.

Origin

My attention was drawn to the little phrase 'tide over' on 'Meltdown
Monday' - 15th September 2008, when Robert Peston, the BBC's Business
Editor, posted this on his blog:

"As for the US central banking system, the Fed, it is endeavouring to
minimise the damage to the financial system from these shocks by
allowing securities firms to swap shares for short-term loans, to tied
them over."

As is the norm with the BBC's audience, the 'tied over' misspelling
produced a much more impassioned response than the chaos in the
world's financial system. It may well have been merely a typo - 'e'
and 'd' are next to each other on QWERTY keyboards after all. The
correct spelling is of course 'tide over'. On reflection, 'tide over'
doesn't seem any more intuitive than 'tied over'; so what is the
origin of the phrase?

'Tiding over', i.e. the eking out of a small stock until a larger
supply arrives, doesn't at first sight appear to have any direct
connection with tidal waters. That's because the meaning of this
phrase has changed slightly over the years. The original 'tiding over'
was a seafaring term. The literal meaning was 'in the absence of wind
to fill the sails, float with the tide'. This usage was recorded by
the English seaman Captain John Smith. Smith is best known for his
role in establishing the first permanent English settlement in North
America at Jamestown, Virginia. In addition to that achievement, he
had more luck as a mariner than his namesake John Edward Smith, the
master of the Titanic. His status as a sailing authority was
established by his writing the influential sailor's manual A Sea
Grammar, 1627, which includes this earliest known citation of 'tide
over':

"To Tide ouer to a place, is to goe ouer with the Tide of ebbe or
flood, and stop the contrary by anchoring till the next Tide."

That sense of tiding over, in which ships would tide over here and
tide over there, was superseded by a 'coping with a short-term
problem' meaning. This meaning drew on the imagery of ships floating
over a obstacle on a swelling tide. Our present figurative usage of
that image was established by the early 19th century, as in the Earl
of Dudley's Letters to the Bishop of Llandaff, 1821:

"I wish we may be able to tide over this difficulty."