tide [OE] In Old English a tide was a time, period, or season, a sense surviving in Eastertide and Shrovetide, and it was not used in connection with the sea until the later medieval period. The saying time and tide wait for no man [ME] originally referred just to time, with tide used as a repetition of the sense to add emphasis. Despite the great difference in their contemporary meanings, tidy [ME] is from tide. Right up to the early 18th century it meant ‘timely, seasonable, opportune’, and acquired its current sense via the uses ‘attractive, good-looking’ and ‘good, pleasing’ around 1700. Perhaps based on tidy is the verb titivate which in the early 19th century was also spelt tidivate.