Definition of "bye"
bye1
noun
plural byes
(obsolete) A thing not directly aimed at; a secondary or subsidiary object, course, path, undertaking, issue, etc.
Quotations
The Synod of Dort in some points condemneth, upon the by, even the discipline of the Church of England.The spelling has been modernized.
1655, Thomas Fuller, edited by James Nichols, The Church History of Britain, […], new edition, volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [James Nichols] for Thomas Tegg and Son, […], published 1837
(Scotland) An unspecified way or place.
Quotations
adjective
comparative more bye, superlative most bye
Quotations
I left Colchester at one o'clock, and had a very agreeable ride from thence to my Uncle's– It is a very bye road , I did not meet a carriage or horse all the way, which is I believe eleven or twelve miles, but however I turned this to good advantage, and availed myself of the rural ride and variegated prospects, which assisted me to meditate.
1797, John Henry Prince, Original letters and essays on moral and entertaining subjects, page 85
So riding towards Cheshunt in the same county, he put into a bye sort of a house, a little out of the road, in which, finding only a poor old woman bitterly weeping, and asking the reason of shedding those tears, she told him, that she was a poor widow and being somewhat indebted for rent to her landlord whe expected him every minute to come and seize what few goods she had, which would be her utter ruin.
2013, Captain Alexander Smith, Arthur L. Hayward, A Complete History of the Lives and Robberies of the Most Notorious Highwaymen, Footpads, Shoplifts and Cheats of Both Sexes, page 69
Quotations
But the two labourers of whom I am speaking had their allowances, lived on their fixed wages with the profits of their bye labour, one being pig-killer to the village, and, therefore, always busy from Michaelmas to Lady-day, at a shilling a pig, and the offal, on which his family subsisted, wit h the produce of their small curtilage, for half the year.
1894, James Edwin Thorold Rogers, Eight Chapters on the History of Work and Wages, page 138
As we shall see presently the wife of a craftsman almost always worked as her husband's assistant in his trade, or if not, she often eked out the family income by some such bye industry as brewing and spinning; sometimes she even practised a separate trade as a femme sole.
2012, Eileen Power, Michael Moïssey Postan, Medieval Women, page 45
bye2
interjection
(colloquial) Goodbye.
(African-American Vernacular, slang) An exclamation of disbelief or dismissal.
Quotations
Rowlings-Blake responded: "Girl bye, if he can't take criticism from 'a joke', what's he gonna do when somebody real comes for him? #notready"
2016 August 7, Susan Edelman, C.J. Sullivan, Bruce Golding, “Trump supporter’s sign gets torched”, in New York Post, New York, N.Y.: News Corp, archived from the original on 2022-12-05
bye3
noun
plural byes
Quotations
In thim days the bye who wint to work in the foundhry to learn the thrade, in goin' into the shop in the morning would meet a big, ruffneck boss wit his blue faunel shirt on and his schleeves rolled up to his ilbows, who could show him the mishtakes he made the day befoor, if he made any.
1907, International Molders' and Foundry Workers' Journal, page 545
Hardy, weatherbeaten, intimately familiar with the winds and tides of his local shore, capable of turning his hand to many things, squeezing a hard living from the treacherous sea—a figure rendered familiar by the words “Ise the bye who builds the boat / And ise the bye that sails her / Ise the bye who catches the fish / And takes them home to Liza."
2012, Robert Craig Brown, Illustrated History of Canada, page 224