bye

[bahy]

noun Also by.

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.

Golf. the holes of a stipulated course still unplayed after the match is finished.

Cricket. a run made on a ball not struck by the batsman.

something subsidiary, secondary, or out of the way.

adjective

by¹.

Idioms

by the bye, by the way; incidentally: By the bye, how do you spell your name?Also by the by.

Origin of bye

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. 2019

British Dictionary definitions for byer

bye

noun

sport the situation in which a player or team in an eliminatory contest wins a preliminary round by virtue of having no opponent

golf one or more holes of a stipulated course that are left unplayed after the match has been decided

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

something incidental or secondary

by the bye incidentally; by the way: used as a sentence connector

Word Origin for bye

C16: a variant of by

bye

bye-bye

sentence substitute

British informal goodbye

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

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.

bye

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.