bidding

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The act of offering a price for an item, especially during an auction or sale.

   The auctioneer opened the bidding at five thousand dollars.

   Online bidding for the rare stamp continued through the weekend.

   Note

   The determiner tells this noun apart from the "command" meaning. Someone's bidding is an order, while the bidding is the contest of offers (the auctioneer opened the bidding). In the plural, biddings are the separate offers themselves. Rowland Prothero's English Farming, Past and Present (1912) blames such biddings for forcing existing owners into ruinous competition.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   An order or request that one is expected to obey or carry out for another.

   The courtiers hurried to carry out the queen's bidding.

   He was tired of doing his employer's bidding without a word of thanks.

   Similarcommand, order, behest

   Note

   Here the commanding half of bid becomes a noun. It nearly always follows a possessive, in do someone's bidding or at someone's bidding, and so carries a note of service owed to another. Behest is a close synonym that works the same way (at the boss's behest). The noun can also be plural: Fulwar William Fowle urged his Salisbury congregation in 1868 to "Do their biddings."

3. 3
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of bid.

   The collectors were bidding aggressively for the rare manuscript.

   Bidding wisely requires knowing when to stop raising your offer.

   Note

   The same -ing form serves both halves of bid. In the price-offering half it usually runs without an object, often followed by for (bidding for the manuscript). In the older half it takes an object, whether that is a command, an invitation or a greeting (bidding them come in, bidding her goodnight). A further use, proclaiming a prayer, is now obsolete.

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