Overbid

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /ˌəʊvəˈbɪd/

Definitions

1. To propose a price that surpasses the fair market value during an auction
2. To submit a bid that exceeds a previous offer in an auction setting
3. To propose a monetary amount that surpasses the current highest bid in competitive buying

Etymology: "Overbid" is a plain compound, built from the prefix "over-" and the verb "bid." The prefix descends from Old English "ofer," which carries the sense of "above" or "beyond," a meaning it shares with the Latin-derived "super-" in other English words. Its ancestry reaches back to a very old Indo-European root meaning "up" or "over," which also gave Greek and Latin many of their own prefixes of this kind. Attaching "over-" to a verb to mean "do too much of the same action" is an old and productive English habit. Here it means to bid higher than someone else, or higher than the item is worth, so the word is literally "to bid over." Because the compound is transparent, its meaning follows directly from its two parts without any shift in sense over time.

Synonyms: outbid

Antonyms: underbid