tide over

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tide over (third-person singular simple present tides over, present participle tiding over, simple past and past participle tided over)

1. (transitive, idiomatic) To support or sustain someone, especially financially, for a limited period.

   Could you lend me ten pounds to tide me over till payday?

   Would a small snack tide you over until dinner?

   • 1901, Henry James, The Papers:

     Each evening, it was true, when the flare of Fleet Street would have begun really to smoke, she had, in resistance to old habit, a little to hold herself; but for three successive days she tided over that crisis.

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