Word.ws English Dictionary

byways

byways is the plural of byway.

Meaning of byway

Noun

byway (plural byways)

  1. A road or track not following a main route; a secondary or minor road or path.
    • Near-synonyms: back road, back street, back lane
  2. A road that is not frequently travelled.
  3. (broadly) a little-known or arcane field of study or detail.
    • Though his account of written communication over the past 5,000 years necessarily has a powerful forward momentum, his diversions down the fascinating byways of the subject are irresistible ...2013 September 14, Jane Shilling, “The Golden Thread: the Story of Writing, by Ewan Clayton, review [print edition: Illuminating language]”, in The Daily Telegraph (Review), page R29

Phrases with byways

Questions about byways

What is byways the plural of?
Byways is the plural of byway.

Words near byways in the dictionary

  1. Bywater
  2. Bywaters
  3. Bywaters' syndrome
  4. byway
  5. byway open to all traffic
  6. byways
  7. byways open to all traffic
  8. Bywell
  9. bywoner
  10. bywoners
  11. Bywong

Source and license

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