tie - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

A tie in the musical sense.

From Middle English teye (“cord, chain”), from Old English tēag, tēah (“cord, chain”), from Proto-West Germanic *taugu, from Proto-Germanic *taugō, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dewk-. Compare Danish tov, Icelandic taug.

tie (plural ties)

  1. A knot; a fastening.
  2. A knot of hair, as at the back of a wig.
  3. A necktie (item of clothing consisting of a strip of cloth tied around the neck). See also bow tie, black tie.
    Synonym: necktie
  4. A lace-up shoe.
    Coordinate term: court shoe
    Oxford ties; Derby ties
  5. A twist tie, a piece of wire embedded in paper, strip of plastic with ratchets, or similar object which is wound around something and tightened.
  6. A connection between people or groups of people, especially a strong connection.
    Synonym: bond
    the sacred ties of friendship or of duty
    Occasions that reinforce the ties of kindred.
    • 1983 December 31, Gary Phillips, “Gays in Gaol [Jail]: Who Cares”, in Gay Community News, volume 11, number 24, page 15:
      In most states the court view is that if a person rents (and particularly if it is only a room), does not have a car, does not live within a nuclear family unit, is not established in full-time employment, then that person is considered to be without ties and an itinerant and therefore ought not to be granted bail.
    • 2004, Peter Bondanella, chapter 4, in Hollywood Italians: Dagos, Palookas, Romeos, Wise Guys, and Sopranos, pages 231–232:
      The film ends with the colorful deaths of Nico's enemies after he thwarts their attempts to assassinate a U.S. Senator investigating ties between drug dealers and the CIA.
    • 2026 January 13, Ben Blanchard, Fabian Hamacher, “Taiwan thanks Canada for its support ahead of prime minister's China trip”, in Sharon Singleton, editor, Reuters‎[1], sourced from Taipei (Reuters), archived from the original on 13 January 2026:
      Taiwan President Lai Ching-te thanked Canada on Tuesday for its support during recent Chinese military drills and praised the deepening of ties between the two sides, shortly ahead of a visit to China by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
    • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:tie.
  7. (construction) A structural member firmly holding two pieces together.
    Hyponym: tiebar
    Ties work to maintain structural integrity in windstorms and earthquakes.

    The short wooden bars are ties, and the long metal bars are rails.
  8. (rail transport, US) A horizontal wooden or concrete structural member that supports and ties together rails.
    Synonym: (British) sleeper
  9. The situation in which two or more participants in a competition are placed equally.
    Synonym: draw
    Hyponym: stalemate
    It's two outs in the bottom of the ninth, tie score.
  10. (cricket) The situation at the end of all innings of a match where both sides have the same total of runs (different from a draw).
    Coordinate term: draw
  11. (sports, US) An equalizer, a run, goal, point, etc which causes participants in a competition to be placed equally or have the same score(s).
  1. (sports, British) A meeting between two players or teams in a competition.
    The FA Cup third round tie between Liverpool and Cardiff was their first meeting in the competition since 1957.
  2. (music) A curved line connecting two notes of the same pitch denoting that they should be played as a single note with the combined length of both notes.
    Coordinate term: slur
  3. (phonetic transcription) A curved line connecting two letters (⁀), used in the IPA to denote a coarticulation, as for example /d͡ʒ/.
    Wikipedia: tie (typography)
  4. (statistics) One or more equal values or sets of equal values in the data set.
  5. (surveying) A bearing and distance between a lot corner or point and a benchmark or iron off site.
  6. (graph theory) A connection between two vertices.
  7. A tiewig.

strong connection between people

sports: tie score

sports: a meeting between two players or teams in a competition

curved line connecting two letters, used in the IPA

From Middle English teien, teiȝen, from Old English tīġan, tīeġan, from Proto-West Germanic *taugijan, from Proto-Germanic *taugijaną, from Proto-Indo-European *dewk- (“to tug, draw”). Cognate with Icelandic teygja.

tie (third-person singular simple present ties, present participle tying, simple past and past participle tied)

  1. (transitive) To twist (a string, rope, or the like) around itself securely.
    Tie this rope in a knot for me, please.
    Tie the rope to this tree.
  2. (transitive) To form (a knot or the like) in a string or the like.
    Tie a knot in this rope for me, please.
  3. (transitive) To attach or fasten (one thing to another) by string or the like.
    Tie him to the tree.
  4. (transitive, sometimes figurative) To secure (something) by string or the like.
    Tie your shoes.
  5. (ambitransitive) To have the same score or position as another in a competition or ordering.
    They tied for third place.
    They tied the game.
  6. (US, transitive) To have the same score or position as (another) in a competition or ordering.
    He tied me for third place.
  7. (music) To unite (musical notes) with a line or slur in the notation.
  8. (US, dated, colloquial) To believe; to credit.
    • 1929, Collier's, volume 84, page 56:
      […] It seems they have sort of betrothal teas — can you tie it?"
      "Heavens!" said Mary […]
    • 1940, Woman's Home Companion, volume 67, numbers 1-4, page 134:
      As the door slammed Pete turned to Hally, fuming. "Can you tie that? A little twopenny cold frightening him off."
  9. (programming, transitive) In the Perl programming language, to extend (a variable) so that standard operations performed upon it invoke custom functionality instead.
    • 2000, Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, Jon Orwant, Programming Perl: 3rd Edition, page 814:
      So, a class for tying a hash to an ISAM implementation might provide an extra method to traverse a set of keys sequentially (the “S” of ISAM), since your typical DBM implementation can't do that.

to attach or fasten with string

to secure something by tying a string or the like

to form a knot or the like in a string or the like

to achieve the same score — see equalize

From Old Norse þegja, from Proto-Germanic *þagjaną, cognate with Swedish tiga, Gothic 𐌸𐌰𐌷𐌰𐌽 (þahan). The Germanic verb is probably cognate with Latin taceō (“to be silent”).

tie (past tense tav or tiede, past participle tiet)

  1. to be silent, fall silent

From ti- (demonstrative correlative prefix) +‎ -e (correlative suffix of location).

tie (accusative tien)

  1. there (demonstrative correlative of location)
    Iun nokton li havis strangan sonĝon. Voĉo diris al li: —Iru al Amsterdamo kaj tie sur la Papen-ponto vi trovos trezoron.
    One night he had a strange dream. A voice told him: "Go to Amsterdam and there over the Papen-bridge you will find a treasure.

When combined with ĉi, the adverbial particle of proximity, tie ĉi means here.

From Proto-Finnic *tee, from Proto-Finno-Permic *teje.

tie

  1. way, road, path, route (for travelling)
  2. road (way for travel, especially one that is large enough to allow cars to pass)
  3. (figuratively) road, way, route
    tie onneen ― the road to happiness
  4. (figuratively) way, means, approach

Regional variants of tie

North Karelian(Viena) tie
South Karelian(Tver) tie

From Proto-Finnic *tee. Cognates include Finnish tie and Veps te.

tie (genitive tien, partitive tietä / tiedä)

  1. way, road
Viena Karelian declension of tie (type 6/pimie, no gradation)
singular plural
nominative tie tiet
genitive tien teijen
partitive tietä teitä
illative tieh teih
inessive tieššä teissä
elative tieštä teistä
adessive tiellä teillä
ablative tieltä teiltä
translative tiekši teiksi
essive tienä teinä
comitative — teineh
abessive tiettä teittä
prolative — —
instructive — tein
Tver Karelian declension of tie (type 6/pimie, no gradation)
singular plural
nominative tie tiet
genitive tien tein
partitive tiedä teidä
illative tieh teih
inessive tieššä teissä
elative tieštä teistä
adessive tiellä teillä
ablative tieldä teildä
translative tiekši teiksi
essive tienä teinä
comitative tienke teinke
abessive tiettä teittä
prolative tiečči teičči
instructive — tein
Possessive forms of tie
1st person tieni
2nd person tieš
3rd person tieh
*) Possessive forms are very rare for adjectives and only used in substantivised clauses.

tie

  1. those; nominative plural masculine of tas
This entry needs pronunciation information. If you are familiar with the IPA then please add some!

tiẽ

  1. nominative masculine plural of tàs

From Proto-Finnic *tee.

tie

  1. way

tie

  1. nonstandard spelling of tiē
  2. nonstandard spelling of tié
  3. nonstandard spelling of tiě
  4. nonstandard spelling of tiè

tie

  1. alternative form of teye (“chest, enclosure”)

From Old Norse þegja.

tie (present tense tier, simple past tidde or tiet, past participle tidd or tiet)

  1. to become quiet, stop talking
    Han tidde plutselig. ― He suddenly became quiet.
  2. to be quiet
    Hun tidde mens hun arbeidet. ― She was quiet while she worked.

tie n (plural ties, feminine tia, feminine plural tias, masculine tio, masculine plural tios)

  1. (gender-neutral, neologism, informal) pibling
    • 2019 September 30, Ophelia Cassiano, “Guia para “Linguagem Neutra” (PT-BR)”, in Medium‎[3]:
      Nosse tie é muito criative.
      Our pibling is very creative.