Word.ws English Dictionary

bywords

bywords is the plural of byword.

Meaning of byword

Noun

byword (plural bywords)

  1. A proverb or proverbial expression, common saying; a frequently used word or phrase.
  2. A characteristic word or expression; a word or phrase associated with a person or group.
  3. Someone or something that stands as an example (i.e. metonymically) for something else, by having some of that something's characteristic traits.
    • Illustrious unfortunates attract a wider sympathy, not because their griefs are more intense, but because, being set on lofty pedestals, they the better serve mankind as instances and bywords of calamity.1846, Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Christmas Banquet”, in Mosses from an Old Manse
  4. An object of notoriety or contempt, scorn or derision.
    • He hath made me also a byword of the people […]1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Job 17:6
  5. A nickname or epithet.

Questions about bywords

What is bywords the plural of?
Bywords is the plural of byword.

Words near bywords in the dictionary

  1. Bywell
  2. bywoner
  3. bywoners
  4. Bywong
  5. byword
  6. bywords
  7. bywork
  8. byworks
  9. Byz
  10. byzaanchies
  11. byzaanchy

Source and license

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