bide » buy

Chiefly in:   buy one's time

Classification: English – idiom-related

Spotted in the wild:

  • Sunny, the level-headed one of the four, agrees to do the show for a lack of anything else to do, at first using it to buy her time while she finds a real job. (The Celebrity Café, book review, Mar 25, 2004)
  • I’m just buying my time until I have to go get ready for work right now. (link)
  • This car is the biggest piece of unreliabile junk I’ve ever seen. I’m just buying my time until I can get another car. (alt.autos.dodge, Dec 8, 2000)
  • I will just keep doing the best I can, and buy my time until we can open up our own damn store. (link)
  • She was a Data Angel. And that meant she was an expert on lurking in the shadows, buying her time until she could make her move. (link)

Analyzed or reported by:

Adrian Bailey comments:

Buying time is figuratively possible, but it seems to have infected the expression “bide time”.

| link | entered by Chris Waigl, 2005/08/29 |

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