Other forms: abiding, abides, abided
To abide is to put up with something, or to remain. Cannot abide it, abide by the rules, abide with me.
Cannot abide is the commonest use by far and means to find something intolerable — I cannot abide waiting. Abide by means to obey or accept: abide by the decision. The older sense of remaining survives in hymns and in abiding, meaning lasting: an abiding memory, an abiding interest. Note that the past tense is abided in modern use, and abode survives only in the archaic sense of a dwelling.
1verbabideTo put up with something.
“I can't abide people who talk loudly on their phones in the cinema.”
2verbobeyTo obey or accept a rule or decision.
“Players must abide by the referee's decision.”
abide is an enduring or accepting.
Old English abidan meant to wait for or endure, built on bidan, to wait — the same root as bide, as in bide your time. Abiding something and waiting it out are the same act.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰeydʰ-
Middle English
abyden
English, today
abide
From Middle English abyden. From Middle English abyden, from Old English ābīdan (“to abide, wait, remain, delay, remain behind; survive; wait for, await; expect”), from Proto-West Germanic uʀbīdan, from Proto-Germanic uzbīdaną (“to expect, tolerate”), equivalent to a + bide. Cognate with Scots abide (“to abide, remain”), Middle High German erbīten (“to await, expect”), Gothic 𐌿𐍃𐌱𐌴𐌹𐌳𐌰𐌽 (“to expect, await, have patience”). The sense of pay for is due to influence from aby.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA