Word.ws English Dictionary

BIY

BIY noun: the act of purchasing materials for a project (typically a home renovation) and then hiring a professional to use them.

Noun

BIY (uncountable)

  1. The act of purchasing materials for a project (typically a home renovation) and then hiring a professional to use them.
    • UBM, which has 120 fully‐stocked branches around Britain, sees a growing demand for what it calls the B.I.Y. (buy-it-yourself) market of self‐contractors who select their components and then pay a tradesman for installation.1978 April 23, Stephen Kindel, “Split‐Level Sprawl in Europe”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 10 Feb 2018
    • BIY is where consumers buy the materials for professionals to fit. "According to the Polycell Report, from Reed's Polycell Products, DIY is being replaced by BIY (Buy-it-yourself),"1987 April 10, Marketing

Examples of BIY in a sentence

  • People here prefer the term BIY - buy it yourself, and then employ labour to do the work for them.[2001 August 9, John Cassy, “B&Q moves in with its China ware”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media...
  • It is less DIY, however, than BIY: Buy-it-Yourself.2009 August 27, “Orient Homes chief Li Fengjiang tools up for China's DIY revolution”, in The Daily Telegraph, London: Telegraph Media...

Origin of BIY

Initialism of buy it yourself, inspired by DIY.

Questions about BIY

What does BIY mean?
BIY means the act of purchasing materials for a project (typically a home renovation) and then hiring a professional to use them.
How do you use BIY in a sentence?
People here prefer the term BIY - buy it yourself, and then employ labour to do the work for them.
What part of speech is BIY?
BIY is a noun.

Words near BIY in the dictionary

  1. bixies
  2. bixin
  3. bixins
  4. Bixler
  5. Bixlers
  6. BIY
  7. Biyaadhoo
  8. Biyan
  9. Biyang
  10. biyatch
  11. biyatches

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: BIY (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “BIY.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/biy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.