Word.ws English Dictionary

byo

byo is the obsolete spelling of bayou.

Meaning of bayou

Noun

bayou (plural bayous)

  1. A slow-moving, often stagnant creek or river.
    • You natural persons old and young! / You on the Mississippi and on all the branches and bayous of the Mississippi! / You friendly boatmen and mechanics! you roughs!1892, Walt Whitman, “A Leaf for Hand in Hand”, in Leaves of Grass […], Philadelphia, Pa.: David McKay, publisher, […], →OCLC, page 109
  2. A swamp; a marshy (stagnant) body of water.
    • At that time I had no staff officer who could be trusted with that duty. In the woods, at a short distance below the clearing, I found a depression, dry at the time, but which at high water became a slough or bayou.1886, Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, volume 2

See all 3 meanings of bayou

Phrase capitalized: BYO

BYO

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of bring your own.
    • After I check into my single room—a rustic BYO-bed-sheets situation—I return to the common area and settle in for the afternoon’s presentations.2023 August 31, Frankie de la Cretaz, “Postcard from Camp Gaylore”, in Cosmopolitan
  2. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of buy your own.

Synonyms of byo

Forms of byo

pluralbyos

Questions about byo

What is byo the obsolete spelling of?
Byo is the obsolete spelling of bayou.
What part of speech is byo?
Byo is a phrase.

Words near byo in the dictionary

  1. bynin
  2. Bynoe
  3. Bynoes
  4. Bynum
  5. Bynums
  6. byo
  7. BYOB
  8. byobu
  9. BYOC
  10. byock
  11. byocks

Source and license

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