Other forms: bidders
A bidder is somebody offering money at an auction. The highest bidder, several bidders, a phone bidder.
Sold to the highest bidder is the phrase the whole system turns on, and it is used figuratively for anything sold without loyalty. In business, a bidder is a company competing for a contract or trying to buy another, and a hostile bidder is one the board does not want. Note bid, bidding; and do somebody's bidding, which is an unrelated and older sense of bid meaning to command.
1nounbidderSomebody offering money at an auction.
“The auctioneer raised his hammer and looked round the room for another bidder.”
bidder is a person offering money.
Bid plus -er. Two different Old English verbs — biddan, to ask, and beodan, to command — collapsed into modern bid, which is why bidding at auction and doing somebody's bidding feel unconnected.
Middle English
bidder
English, today
bidder
From Middle English bidder, biddere, equivalent to bid + -er. Cognate with stq Bidder, German Bitter.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA