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bye1

[bahy]
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noun Also by.
  1. Sports. in a tournament, the preferential status of a player or team not paired with a competitor in an early round and thus automatically advanced to play in the next round: The top three seeded players received byes in the first round.
  2. Golf. the holes of a stipulated course still unplayed after the match is finished.
  3. Cricket. a run made on a ball not struck by the batsman.
  4. something subsidiary, secondary, or out of the way.
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adjective
  1. by1.
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Idioms
  1. by the bye, by the way; incidentally: By the bye, how do you spell your name?Also by the by.
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Origin of bye1

1710–20; variant spelling of by1 in its noun sense “side way”
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
British Dictionary definitions for byer

bye1

noun
  1. sport the situation in which a player or team in an eliminatory contest wins a preliminary round by virtue of having no opponent
  2. golf one or more holes of a stipulated course that are left unplayed after the match has been decided
  3. cricket a run scored off a ball not struck by the batsman: allotted to the team as an extra and not to the individual batsmanSee also leg bye
  4. something incidental or secondary
  5. by the bye incidentally; by the way: used as a sentence connector
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Word Origin

C16: a variant of by

bye2

bye-bye

sentence substitute
  1. British informal goodbye
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Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Word Origin and History for byer

bye

1

in sporting use, a variant of by (prep). Originally in cricket, "a run scored on a ball that is missed by the wicket-keeper" (1746); later, in other sports, "position of one who is left without a competitor when the rest have drawn pairs" (1883), originally in lawn-tennis.

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bye

2

shortened form of good-bye. Reduplication bye-bye is recorded from 1709, though as a sound used to lull a child to sleep it is attested from 1630s.

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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper