Other forms: hidden, hiding, hides, hid
To hide is to go, or to put something, where nobody can see it. Hide behind the door, hide the presents, hide your disappointment. It is irregular: hide, hid, hidden.
It works with and without an object, which is unusual and useful: the children hid, and the children hid the key. The figurative sense — hiding a feeling — is just as common as the physical one and is the one adults actually use. Note the noun hide, which is a different word meaning an animal's skin, and also a small shelter for watching birds. Hide and seek is the game, and it is written without hyphens in modern usage.
1verbhideTo put something where it cannot be seen or found.
“She hid the letter under a pile of books.”
2verbsomewhereTo go somewhere you cannot be seen.
“He hid in the shed until they had gone.”
3verbkeepTo keep a feeling or a fact from other people.
“She could not hide how pleased she was.”
4nounskinThe skin of a large animal.
“The chair is covered in cow hide.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
hide is a way of concealing.
Old English hydan comes from a root meaning to cover or wrap, and the same root gives hoard and, at a distance, custody and cuticle. Hiding and hoarding began as the same act: putting something under cover where it cannot be got at.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)kewH- — to cover, wrap, encase
Proto-Germanic
*huzdijaną — to hoard
Proto-West Germanic
*huʀdijan — to conceal
Old English
hȳdan — to hide, conceal, preserve
Middle English
hiden
English, today
hide
From Middle English hiden, huden, from Old English hȳdan (“to hide, conceal, preserve”), from Proto-West Germanic huʀdijan (“to conceal”), from Proto-Germanic huzdijaną (“to hoard”), from Proto-Indo-European (s)kewH- (“to cover, wrap, encase”), from Proto-Indo-European (s)kewH- (“to cover”). The verb was originally weak. In the King James Version of the Bible (1611), both hid and hidden are used for the past participle. 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA