by

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (2)  · 
“
And because it principally treats of the love of books, we have chosen, after the fashion of the ancient Romans, fondly to name it by a Greek word, Philobiblon.

View all »
Definitions (74)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (24)

  1. preposition Close to; next to: the window by the door.
  2. preposition With the use or help of; through: We came by the back road.
  3. preposition Up to and beyond; past: We drove by the house.
21 more from this dictionary »

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (45)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (3)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (2)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

  • I would study the menu and it would be chicken followed by a Portuguese word and rice. —  GaspingforAirtime
  • According to Canon, the name's inspired by the Spanish word allegria, which means 'joy' in English. —  www.hardwarezone.com Reviews
  • The carmaker is using a new approach, known as flexikonto in Slovak, by which it hopes to retain skilled labour. —  Slovak Spectator
  • Introduced to the gathering parliament in Turkish by his full name of "Barack Hussein Obama" - which Mr Obama himself used in Strasbourg but which he avoided in the 2008 White House campaign - the new US president was at pains to distance himself from his predecessor George W. Bush. —  Telegraph.co.uk: news business sport the Daily Telegraph newspaper Sunday Telegraph
  • Polls open under tight security in Thai by-elections —  Raw Story
More examples »
 

Tags

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 84 times.

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Etymologies (4)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English, from Old English bī, be; see ambhi in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (3)

  1. from Middle English by, bi, also be, from Anglo-Saxon bī, big, also be (in comp. be-, under accent bī-, big-: see be-, be-), = Old Saxon bi, bī, be = OFries. bī, be = Middle Low German bī, Low German bī, by = Dutch bij = Old High German bī, pī, bi, Middle High German bī, German bei = Goth, bi, by, about, orig. meaning ‘about,’ whence in Anglo-Saxon, etc., by, near, at, through, according to, concerning, etc.; related to L. ambi- = Greek ἀμφί, and Sanskrit abhi, about: see ambi-, amphi-. Hence the prefixes by- = be-, by- = be-, by-.
  2. Middle English by, bi, from Anglo-Saxon by¯ = Icelandic by¯r, bær, or bær (gen, bæjar, by¯jar) = Norwegian bö = Swedish Danish by, a town, village, in Icelandic and Norwegian also a farm, landed estate; akin to Anglo-Saxon bū = Old Saxon bū = Icelandic bū = Swedish Danish bo, a dwelling, habitation, later Scots bow (see bow), from Anglo-Saxon būan = Icelandic būa, dwell: see bower, boor, big, be, and cf. by-law.
  3. Another and more reg. form of bee, from Middle English bye, byze, beighe, bez, beh, etc., from Anglo-Saxon beáh, beág, a ring: see bee.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »
/bai/
by American Heritage

Charts
frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word hundreds of times a day.

Recently looked up

obbligato · abjure · Co-ed · Goulding · ticular

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

fattoria · Wenn du Wachsmasken magst: Max macht Wachsmasken. · supercalifragilistichespiralidoso · Wenn Lloyds Leute heute läuten, läuten Lloyds Leute heute laut. · telofy