Word.ws English Dictionary

by-the-by

by-the-by is the alternative spelling of by the by.

Meaning of by the by

Prepositional phrase

  1. Used to introduce a new topic; incidentally, by the way.
    • Now, Mrs. Clarke was one of those to whom caps and crape were the very morality of mourning—she was not the only one, by the by, with whom propriety stands for principle,...1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter I, in Romance and Reality. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, pages 70-71

See all 2 meanings of by the by

Questions about by-the-by

What is by-the-by the alternative spelling of?
By-the-by is the alternative spelling of by the by.

Words near by-the-by in the dictionary

  1. by-stroke
  2. by-strokes
  3. by-table
  4. by-the-book
  5. by-the-books
  6. by-the-by
  7. by-the-bye
  8. by-the-numbers
  9. by-the-wind sailor
  10. by-the-wind sailors
  11. by-turning

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: by-the-by (page history and authors); by the by (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-the-by.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/by-the-by. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.