bike1
/bʌɪk
/noun
A bicycle or motorcycle: I’m going by bike [as modifier]: a bike ride...
- His best freebie has been a mountain bike and a bike rack for his car.
- It's no secret that eBay has become one of the hottest spots on the Internet to buy and sell used bikes and bike gear.
- There is also a fun ride where the citizens of Hamburg can ride their bikes around a set course in the city streets.
verb [no object, with adverbial of direction] informal
1Ride a bicycle or motorcycle: Danny bikes to the park and back every day...
- Falconry displays, American cheerleaders, Quad biking and train rides will also feature.
- Avoid driving whenever possible by walking, biking, using public transit, or car-pooling.
- These are real and possible threats while biking along a suburban city paved bike and hike trail.
1.1 [with object] British Cause (a letter or package) to be delivered by bicycle or motorcycle: I’ll get them to bike the scripts over...
- There was a courier service that would bike round bags of it with little flags of the country it came from on the sachet.
- Illuminating and surprising, this programme should be biked directly to the FA and anywhere else where national sports are organised.
- If your "bad back" is bothering you too much to respond online, then, maybe, you could hop on a bicycle, and bike the message to me.
Phrases
get off one's bike
on your bike!
Origin
Late 19th century: abbreviation.
bicycle from mid 19th century:
The velocipede (literally ‘rapid foot’) was the early form of bicycle, which is formed from bi- ‘two’ and Greek kuklos ‘wheel’. The abbreviation bike was not long to follow, in the late 19th century. A tricycle as a name for a three-wheeled coach drawn by two horses, dates from the 1820s, with the abbreviation trike appearing in the 1880s. Unicycle, from uni- ‘one’, was first recorded in the US in the 1860s.
Rhymes
bike2
/bʌɪk/noun
Northern English & Scottish rare A nest or swarm of bees, wasps, or hornets: they swarmed over him like a bike of wasps...
- My head felt about the size of a football and buzzed like a bike of bees.
- There are many solitary wasps and solitary bees, and there are many grades of sociality between the solitary life and that of the beehive and the wasps' bike.
- Last season, this birdhouse was inhabited by a bike of wasps.
Origin
Late Middle English: of unknown origin; perhaps from Old English béoc, contraction of béowíc 'bee dwelling'.
- Fourier transform
- four-in-hand
- four-leaf clover
- four-leaved clover
- four-legged friend
- four-letter word
- four noble truths
- four-o'clock
- four o'clock plant
- fourpenny
- fourpenny one
- four-ply
- four-poster
- four-poster bed
- fours
- fourscore
- four-seater
- foursome
- four-square
- four-star
- four-stroke
- fourteen
- fourteenth
- fourth
- fourth-class