Word.ws English Dictionary

by and bye

by and bye is the dated form of by and by.

Meaning of by and by

Adverb

by and by (not comparable)

  1. After a short time.
    • O, how this spring of love resembleth
      The uncertain glory of an April day
      Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
      And by and by a cloud takes all away!1591, William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona
    Synonyms:
    shortly
  2. After an indefinite period.
    • Sit down, have a rest, and by and by you'll be feeling better.
    Synonyms:
    in due course
  3. (obsolete) Immediately; at once.
    • When […] persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Matthew 13:21
    Synonyms:
    now

See all 4 meanings of by and by

Questions about by and bye

What is by and bye the dated form of?
By and bye is the dated form of by and by.

Words near by and bye in the dictionary

  1. by all means
  2. by all reports
  3. by Allah
  4. by an eyelash
  5. by and by
  6. by and bye
  7. by and large
  8. by any chance
  9. by any means
  10. by any measure
  11. by any stretch

Source and license

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