See by the by in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
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"ref": "1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter I, in Romance and Reality. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, pages 70-71:",
"text": "Now, Mrs. Clarke was one of those to whom caps and crape were the very morality of mourning—she was not the only one, by the by, with whom propriety stands for principle,...",
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"ref": "1892, George Grossmith, Weedon Grossmith, chapter 1, in The Diary of a Nobody:",
"text": "She could not get it open, and after all my display, I had to take the Curate (whose name, by-the-by, I did not catch) round the side entrance.",
"type": "quote"
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{
"ref": "1893, William Morris, The Ideal Book:",
"text": "Well, I lay it down, first, that a book quite unornamented can look actually and positively beautiful, and not merely un-ugly, if it be, so to say, architecturally good, which, by the by, need not add much to its price […]",
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"ref": "2023 January 11, Stephen Roberts, “Bradshaw's Britain: castles and cathedrals”, in RAIL, number 974, page 58:",
"text": "By the by, I like Worcester's Shrub Hill station, a three-platform affair of 1850 which may look tired but has character and a splendid frontage on a sunny day.",
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"Used to introduce a new topic; incidentally, by the way."
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"ref": "1990, Susan Sherman, The color of the heart: writing from struggle & change, 1959-1990:",
"text": "These sudden rains. Not tropical - with lightning, thunder, great release after hours of tension. But more nonchalant, more \"by-the-by.\" As if the clouds, rushing to get somewhere else, were to drop some rain in passing.",
"type": "quote"
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{
"ref": "2008 December 19, Marina Hyde, “Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall, by Tom Cruise”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:",
"text": "And in the course of interviews on this subject, he is given to denouncing methadone largely on the basis that it was originally called adolphine after Adolf Hitler. That this is an urban myth only peddled by the Church of Scientology is by-the-by.",
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"ref": "2019 July 28, Paul MacInnes, “Alexandre Lacazette suffers ankle injury in Arsenal friendly defeat by Lyon”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:",
"text": "After that, the fact of a Moussa Dembélé double cancelling out Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s opener seemed by the by.",
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"Incidental; unplanned."
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"text": "Now, Mrs. Clarke was one of those to whom caps and crape were the very morality of mourning—she was not the only one, by the by, with whom propriety stands for principle,...",
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"ref": "1892, George Grossmith, Weedon Grossmith, chapter 1, in The Diary of a Nobody:",
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"ref": "1893, William Morris, The Ideal Book:",
"text": "Well, I lay it down, first, that a book quite unornamented can look actually and positively beautiful, and not merely un-ugly, if it be, so to say, architecturally good, which, by the by, need not add much to its price […]",
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"text": "By the by, I like Worcester's Shrub Hill station, a three-platform affair of 1850 which may look tired but has character and a splendid frontage on a sunny day.",
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"ref": "1990, Susan Sherman, The color of the heart: writing from struggle & change, 1959-1990:",
"text": "These sudden rains. Not tropical - with lightning, thunder, great release after hours of tension. But more nonchalant, more \"by-the-by.\" As if the clouds, rushing to get somewhere else, were to drop some rain in passing.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2008 December 19, Marina Hyde, “Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall, by Tom Cruise”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:",
"text": "And in the course of interviews on this subject, he is given to denouncing methadone largely on the basis that it was originally called adolphine after Adolf Hitler. That this is an urban myth only peddled by the Church of Scientology is by-the-by.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2019 July 28, Paul MacInnes, “Alexandre Lacazette suffers ankle injury in Arsenal friendly defeat by Lyon”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:",
"text": "After that, the fact of a Moussa Dembélé double cancelling out Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s opener seemed by the by.",
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"Incidental; unplanned."
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Download raw JSONL data for by the by meaning in English (4.3kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-11-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-10-02 using wiktextract (fbeafe8 and 7f03c9b). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
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