Gebiddan

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. An Old English verb meaning to pray or beseech someone ; to instruct or order a person to do something ; to put forward something to be accepted or taken
2. A verb from Old English used to mean to supplicate a higher power ; to give a command that must be obeyed ; to present an offering or proposal for acceptance
3. In Old English, a verb for making a humble request to God ; for issuing a firm directive to a subordinate ; for holding out something as a gift or bid

Etymology: Gebiddan is Old English, the ancestor of modern "bid" in its sense of asking, praying, or ordering. Its meaning in Old English was closer to "to pray" or "to ask earnestly," and it was built from the prefix "ge-" (a collective or intensifying marker, roughly equivalent to "together" or "thoroughly") and the verb "biddan," meaning "to request." Its exact Germanic cognates include Old High German "bitten" and Gothic "bidjan," all pointing to a shared ancestor in Proto-Germanic. The form is a dative-infinitive or infinitive-related variant of the Old English verb, and the prefixed version often appears in religious texts where it means to pray or to make a formal petition. Because the word is recorded only in Old English manuscripts, its precise shading of meaning is clearest from the contexts in which it appears.