Bide ('to bite') is a clean example of the i → e strong class: bide → bed → bidt. It is also a transparent cognate of English 'bite', whose archaic strong forms bit / bidden sit in the same family. On its own bide means to bite with the teeth, but its real everyday value lies in a small set of body idioms — bide mærke i, bide tænderne sammen, bide negle — that come up constantly in natural Danish.
Principal parts
| Form | Danish | English |
|---|---|---|
| Infinitive | (at) bide | to bite |
| Present | bider | bite(s) |
| Past | bed | bit |
| Past participle | bidt | bitten |
| Imperative | bid! | bite! |
Bide is strong: the past bed is a stem-vowel change (i → e), and the participle bidt takes the strong consonant-stem -t (not -et). The same i → e ladder runs through bide / bed / bidt, gribe / greb / grebet and ride / red / redet. See Strong verbs: ablaut patterns.
Present: bider
The literal sense is biting with the teeth — animals, insects, people.
Vær forsigtig, hunden bider, hvis den bliver bange.
Be careful, the dog bites if it gets scared.
Myggene bider værst om aftenen.
The mosquitoes bite worst in the evening.
The phrasal bide i means 'bite into / take a bite of':
Hun bed i æblet og opdagede, at det var råddent.
She bit into the apple and discovered it was rotten.
Past: bed
Katten bed mig i fingeren.
The cat bit me on the finger.
Han bed en stor bid af sandwichen.
He took a big bite of the sandwich.
Note the noun en bid ('a bite, a mouthful') hiding in that last sentence — same root, different word class.
Present perfect: har bidt
Bide takes the auxiliary have — har bidt.
Hvem har bidt af kagen?
Who's taken a bite out of the cake?
Jeg er blevet bidt af en hund engang, så jeg er lidt forsigtig.
I was once bitten by a dog, so I'm a little cautious.
That last example shows the passive blive bidt ('be bitten'), formed with blive + the participle.
Key body idioms with bide
This is the heart of the page. Danish has several fixed expressions built on bide, all involving the body, and all extremely common in speech.
| Idiom | Literal | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| bide mærke i (noget) | bite a mark in | take note of / notice particularly |
| bide tænderne sammen | bite the teeth together | grit one's teeth / push through |
| bide negle | bite nails | bite one's nails (from nerves) |
| bide i det sure æble | bite into the sour apple | bite the bullet |
| bide hovedet af nogen | bite the head off someone | snap at someone |
Bid mærke i, at butikken lukker tidligt om søndagen.
Take note that the shop closes early on Sundays.
Det gjorde ondt, men jeg bed tænderne sammen og fortsatte.
It hurt, but I gritted my teeth and carried on.
Hun sad og bed negle, mens hun ventede på svaret.
She sat biting her nails while she waited for the answer.
Til sidst måtte vi bide i det sure æble og betale gebyret.
In the end we had to bite the bullet and pay the fee.
For more expressions built on body parts, see Idioms with body parts.
A note on bide vs spise
Both involve the mouth, but they are not interchangeable. Bide is the single action of the teeth closing on something; spise ('to eat') is the whole act of having a meal. You bide into an apple but you spise dinner.
Han bed i brødet, men spiste det ikke færdigt.
He bit into the bread but didn't finish eating it.
See Spise for the everyday verb of eating.
Common mistakes
❌ Hunden bidede postbuddet.
Incorrect — bide is strong; the past is bed, never bidede.
✅ Hunden bed postbuddet.
The dog bit the postman.
❌ Jeg har bidet i æblet.
Incorrect — the participle is bidt, not bidet.
✅ Jeg har bidt i æblet.
I've bitten into the apple.
❌ Bid mærke på, at mødet er flyttet.
Incorrect — the idiom is bide mærke i, not bide mærke på.
✅ Bid mærke i, at mødet er flyttet.
Note that the meeting has been moved.
❌ Vi bed middag klokken syv.
Incorrect — having a meal is spise; bide is only the action of the teeth.
✅ Vi spiste middag klokken syv.
We had dinner at seven o'clock.
Key takeaways
- Bide is strong, i → e: bider / bed / bidt — never bidede or bidet.
- It mirrors English bite / bit / bitten, which makes the forms easy to anchor.
- The everyday payoff is the idioms: bide mærke i (take note of), bide tænderne sammen (grit your teeth), bide negle (bite your nails).
- Use bide for the action of the teeth; spise for the act of eating a meal.
Now practice Danish
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Start learning Danish→Related Topics
- Strong Verbs: Ablaut PatternsA2 — Danish strong verbs form their past by changing the stem vowel — learn the major ablaut series as families to turn memorisation into pattern recognition.
- Idioms with Body PartsB2 — Danish body-part idioms — holde hovedet koldt, få kolde fødder, trække på skuldrene, bide tænderne sammen — each with its literal gloss, real meaning, a natural usage sentence, and the false friends that trip up English speakers.
- SpiseA1 — Full reference for spise ('to eat') — principal parts, all core tenses in natural sentences, the regular -te weak pattern, mealtime collocations, and the spise/æde register split.
- Datid vs Perfektum: Choosing the PastB1 — When to use the simple past (datid) and when to use the present perfect (perfektum) — with the one clean test that decides it: a definite past-time adverbial forces datid and blocks the perfect.
- FindeA2 — Full reference for finde ('to find') — a strong i–a–u verb (finde / fandt / fundet) — with principal parts, all core tenses, and the high-frequency phrasal verbs finde ud af ('find out'), finde på ('come up with') and finde sted ('take place').