What does it mean to call for tender? This British phrase for soliciting a job is rarely seen in the United States, though tender, from the Latin for “to stretch or hold forth,” is used in North America in two different senses: “to tender,” as in “to offer,” as well as the noun “tender” for something that’s been issued, such as a dollar bill, hence legal tender. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Call for Tender”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Regu. I’m calling from San Diego.
Oh, well, welcome to the program.
Thank you.
How can we help you, Regu?
Well, the other day I was talking to my friend about possibly putting an ad for a construction bid, and I used the usage call for tender. And my friend looked at me and was a bit puzzled, and I realized it’s not a common usage here in the States. And I’m from India originally, and I think it’s probably a British usage, but I was just curious to know where that came from. It’s commonly used in India as a title for an ad when you want to get some bids or quotations and things like that. I was just wondering if it’s something you have heard here or you know where it came from.
Call for tender, and it means to request bids, right?
Correct, yeah.
So you’ve got a big project. You want companies to propose to do that project for you and to tell you how much that they want to be paid.
Absolutely, yeah.
Okay, very good.
We have tender in that way in a few places in American English, but it’s not nearly as common, particularly as a noun. Like you can tender an offer here. One company will try to buy another company, and they are tendering an offer for that company. And even in the National Football League, American football, players may receive tenders or offers of contracts worth millions of dollars. And that’s one of the few places where tender is still pretty widespread as a noun.
Yeah, yeah.
And it has to do with the idea of offering. And, Regu, I don’t know about you guys, but when I was little and I was first getting familiar with dollar bills, I wanted to bite them because it says legal tender. And I thought, what? But isn’t the same usage when you go to bar and say, you know, a bartender, isn’t that the same kind of tendering?
No.
Actually, there are two different tenders in English. They both come to us from French, but the French got them from two different Latin words. So we’ve got one path, which is about, actually, there are three different tenders. I take that back. So we’ve got one path, which is tender as in delicate or soft or sensitive. And then we have the tender that comes from a Latin word meaning to stretch or to hold forth.
And I believe that is the tender for both of these, both to offer something and both to tend bar.
Both come from that same word, but they forked somewhere along the way and slowly made their etymological progress.
So they grew further and further apart.
Yeah, it has to do with reaching out, holding out an outstretched hand.
It’s a relative of the word extend, tender and extend in that sense.
And we have gone so far with tender in American English that we can now say what would otherwise be an oxymoron without blinking, which is to tender and offer, which basically means to offer and offer.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, or tender your resignation if you’re leaving.
That’s another place that people know the verb to tender, tender your resignation.
That’s probably the most common, actually.
If you search in the Google News archives, you’ll find to tender a resignation being incredibly common.
Yeah, and the tender on a dollar bill is not an adjective.
It’s a noun.
It’s something tendered.
It has been offered.
Yeah, legally.
Okay.
All right, so that makes sense.
Yeah.
So a little complicated, but yeah, one of those places where the British and the Commonwealth countries or the former Commonwealth countries all still hold to a certain etymological path that we veered from.
And I have to tell you, I’ve never heard call for tender in this country.
It’s incredibly rare.
It does exist, but it’s incredibly rare.
Maybe at the highest levels, particularly in multinational companies that are required to do business overseas, where they might encounter this language and know that they need to use it in order to be understood in Europe.
Right, so perfectly legitimate but unfamiliar to Americans, that’s for sure.
That makes sense.
Cool, thanks for calling, Megu.
But you just educated a bunch of people about it, so thank you.
I hope so.
Appreciate it.
Thank you so much.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
And that is the mess that is English.
If you’d like to straighten out your side of the mess that is English, give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send your questions and email to words@waywordradio.org.
