bid

Bid comes from two different Old English verbs that collided into one spelling: biddan, meaning 'to ask, demand,' and bēodan, meaning 'to offer, announce.' Biddan traces back through Proto-West Germanic and Proto-Germanic *bidjaną to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'to ask,' while bēodan comes from Proto-Germanic *beudaną, rooted in a word meaning 'be awake, aware.'

Because English speakers stopped distinguishing the two verbs' forms over time, 'asking' and 'offering' merged into a single word — which is why 'bid' can mean both making a request and proposing a price, without any contradiction in its history.

The 'asking' sense connects bid to words like German bitten and Dutch bidden ('to pray'), while the 'offering' sense links it to German bieten and Dutch bieden — and also to the English word 'bede,' a more distant relative sharing that same Proto-Germanic root.