Definition for "to bode well with"

Question

Could someone give me the definition of "to bode well with"?

My best guess is that if something bodes well with you, you find it agreeable; but my Google search did not give me an exact definition, and I'd like to be sure.

Also, how does this (idiomatic?) phrase relate to the verb "to bode (to foretell bad or good fortune)"? Am I right in thinking that by saying "X bodes well with me.", you mean "X foretells good fortune for me, therefore I find it good"?

Thank you very much for reading and thank you in advance for your answers

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

First, the phrase is 'to bode well/ill for'; I have never seen it with 'with'. COCA supplies 265 examples of 'bode well for' but only one example of 'bode well for'. It is a rather old-fashioned phrase and hence often a jocular or literary term little used in everyday conversation or writing.

'Bode' is of course the root, which mean 'suggest the future', so the phase 'bode well/ill for' means 'to portend good/bad luck or experience, or success/failure, in the future for'.

Mentee · Answer

The verb bode is used to suggest that something is a good/bad sign for someone.

The sentence 'X bodes well for me' may indicate that the presence of X brings you good luck or is good for you.

Mister Micawber · Answer

...when I Google searched for "bodes well with", the search engine came up with over 600,000 hits. Including the following example:"Future of tournament bodes well with early exits from stars" http://www.dailymail.com/Sports/201107311466

Could it be that the phrase is simply "to bode well(/ill)" and "with" is just there to give you additional information? Can the above heading be saying "Future of tournament bodes well, as the stars exits ealy?"-- Yes, I think that is precisely the structure.

Even then, there are still many examples of "bodes well with me", which seem to imply what I said in the original question. "Cheap beer bodes well with me." came up at the top of my search result:
/ Can all these instances be simply mistakes?-- I will not say they are 'mistakes'; I just say that they are not the standard usage.

Also, could you tell me what COCA is? If it is a reliable sourse for examples of word usage, I'd very much like to make use of it too. -- COCA is the Corpus of Contemporary American English, one of several available at this website: http://corpus.byu.edu . Corpora (and you can find even more by googling 'corpus of English') are collections of reputable spoken and written texts (from speeches, telecasts, books, magazines and newspapers), so they are much more reliable sources of accepted language than are google hits per se.

Mister Micawber · Answer

I still use Google for quick, rough estimates, but remember that the number of hits must be in the hundreds of thousands (preferably in the millions) before a turn of phrase can be safely considered 'standard' in any way.

Definition for "to bode well with"

Top answer

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

Related Questions