tides

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of tide.

   The tides along this stretch of coast are unusually strong in autumn.

   Sailors learned to read the tides before charts existed.

   Note

   The plural carries the figurative sense as readily as the literal one. Beyond the sea's rise and fall, tides can mean the run of events, as in Stephen W. Sears's Gettysburg (2004): "the tides of war do not wait." In that phrase the plural is idiomatic rather than counted, since nobody is numbering separate tides of war, and it still takes a plural verb.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of tide.

   A modest savings account tides him over between contracts.

   The emergency fund tides the shelter over during its slowest season.

   Note

   The everyday construction puts an object and a particle after it: savings tide a person over, a fund tides a shelter through a lean season. Here the verb is transitive, and the one being carried is its object. Sailors have an intransitive use: a vessel tides into or out of a harbor, drifting with the flow and anchoring when it turns against her. An obsolete sense meant simply "happens."

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