Making services available or giving suggestions is involved in all these words. Offer is the most general; each of the other more specialized words isolates one facet out of its total possibilities. Offer and volunteer may both refer to generous extending of aid, services or a desired item; this generosity may or may not follow a specific request from someone who is, in any case, free to reject or accept the gift: offering to do the dishes; freely volunteering information to the bewildered tourist. When a request precedes the act of offering or volunteering , the implied situation is usually that of someone asking one or more members of a group to do a task. Those who volunteer agree to do the task by free choice rather than by submission to selection or command: only two trainees naïve enough to volunteer for mess duty.

Offer and bid share the context of a competitive attempt to close a contract. Here, the very opposite of a generous and spontaneous giving is indicated: offering the dealer five dollars less than his asking price for the TV set; bidding low deliberately in the hope that no one would mention a higher sum. Usually the act of bidding follows a request or invitation, but the bid would be accepted only if its terms were the most advantageous of those received. The one who offers or bids is committed to the stated terms if acceptance follows.

Offer , propose and present all share the context of putting forward ideas or suggestions in argument or discussion. Propose can also be used in a contractual situation, as in proposing marriage, in which case no previous request is implied and no following acceptance or rejection is necessarily certain. But the one who proposes something is bound to follow through if accepted. In the context of argument or discussion, propose and offer indicate a much more tentative situation, implying that a course of action has been suggested or a new idea brought forward, not so much to be accepted or rejected as to be explored and possibly shaped by still further discussion: offering a new slant on the problem; proposing several possibilities for coping with the crisis; presenting the pertinent facts without comment. In any case, propose implies at least temporary advocacy of an idea, whereas present suggests a much greater tentativeness still: indeed, a debater may present an argument only to refute it.

Present also has applications comparable to offer that range outside the context of discussion. Both suggest humility in certain courteous phrases: offer my condolences; present my apologies. Both may indicate bringing something forward for display or appreciation: the same producer who offered you last year’s greatest box-office success; presenting four new productions during the arts festival. Both words, here, suggest generosity, but if the public must pay admission to see what is displayed, these words can become unpleasantly self-congratulatory and euphemistic.

Proffer and tender , now going out of fashion, were once used to suggest something proposed or offered in a humble, deferential way. They still are used in some extremely formal phrases: proffer my regrets; tender my resignation. Their use in other situations might now seem affected or coy – except when tender is used in the commercial sense of bidding competitively.

• The firm decided not to tender for the construction of the new bridge.