Word.ws English Dictionary

by-strokes

by-strokes is the plural of by-stroke.

Meaning of by-stroke

Noun

by-stroke (plural by-strokes)

  1. An incidental or slyly given stroke; a gratuitous addition or indirect action.
    • But we do not suppose the House of Commons will quite surrender its authority to them on a point of such importance, or allow its intentions to be frustrated by a by-stroke of the Commissioners, without further inquiry.1848 February 12, The Railway Chronicle, page 107
  2. A secondary attack.
    • The carriage of Lord Wilsdown rattled swiftly up to the door of Prince de Rosenberg's house in Park-lane, and the footman springing nimbly to the ground, produced a roll of thunder from the knocker, that would have done credit to a by-stroke of the cloud compelling Zeus .1845, The Impostor: Or, Born Without a Conscience, page 252

Questions about by-strokes

What is by-strokes the plural of?
By-strokes is the plural of by-stroke.

Words near by-strokes in the dictionary

  1. by-stander
  2. by-standers
  3. by-street
  4. by-streets
  5. by-stroke
  6. by-strokes
  7. by-table
  8. by-the-book
  9. by-the-books
  10. by-the-by
  11. by-the-bye

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: by-strokes (page history and authors); by-stroke (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.

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