tide over

present singular third person tides over · participle present tiding over · participle past tided over · past tided over

1. idiomatictransitiveTo support or sustain (someone), especially financially, for a limited period.

   Would a small snack tide you over until dinner?

   2 more examples

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

   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.

   1901, Henry James, The Papers

2. transitiveobsolete outside IndiaTo endure; weather.

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

   2001, Swami Parmeshwaranand, Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Puranas

   2 more examples

   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.’

   1895, Marie Corelli, The Sorrows of Satan: or The Strange Experience of One Geoffrey Tempest, Millionaire […], 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, published 1896, →OCLC, page 75

   In responding, J. P. Knight, the Traffic Manager, emphasised the company's desire to meet the wants of Brighton in every way and to develop traffic, while the question of a reduction in fares would be considered as soon as they had tided over their most pressing difficulties.

   1952 December, R. C. Riley, “By Rail to Kemp Town”, in Railway Magazine, page 832