Talk:by and by

Commentaries

1839, Charles Richardson, A new dictionary of the English language:

BY AND BY, av. No attempt has yet been made to account for this phrase.

In R. Brunne,—" The chartre was read ilk point bi and bi;" the expression seems to be elliptical;—each point by (sub. point) and by (sub. point) by point and by point; each point by itself. "William had taken the homage of barons bi and bi:" of barons, bi baron, and bi baron; each baron by himself, distinctly, separately. So again, "He assayed tham bi and bi, and retreied them ilk one." He, (P. Edward, son of Henry III. when planning his escape from Simon de Montford,) he assayed them (the horses) by one and by one; and tried each one again,—till they stood stone still, and were unable to pursue him, when he had mounted the last and fleetest of them. The same manner of explanation will justify Mr. Tyrwhitt's interpretation "separately, distinctly," not only in the line "these were his words by and by" (Chaucer, R, R. 4581,) but also in the two passages from the Canterbury Tales, to which he refers—

"Two yonge knightes ligging by and by."

"His doughter had a bed all by hireselve, Right in the same chamber by and by."

By and by, then may be, by one and by one; being one, — separately or successively after the other; distinctly, apart, both in space and time.

In — " Our houses shall by and by be thrown down upon our heads," (Stow,)—we approach to our modern usage, for there it is clearly equivalent to the old word anon; in one (sub. instant, moment, minute,) that is immediately, instantly.

— This unsigned comment was added by DCDuring (talk • contribs) at 18:33, 12 September 2012‎.

Procrastination

Interesting, I personally interpret by and by as "not now, not very soon, possibly not ever". It may be my idiolect but the contemporary usage I've seen (heard?) doesn't contradict it. Some source mentioned it as being used in connection with procrastination. "The road of by and by leads to the town of never" is supposed to be a translation of a Spanish proverb. Another example is "People are likely to sing themselves into perdition with "the sweet by and by." What they need is the sweet now, which is the accepted time and the day of salvation." Even Shakespeare: "By and by is easily said" Hamlet III,2:404. DCDuring TALK 14:59, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

That's true in my idiolect as well. However, I think that any word that modifies a phrase to place it in the indistinct future will suffer from such connotations, because in most languages, the future tense is in fact the distinct future tense. That is, "I will do it" or "I shall do it" makes it seem like the doing will occur in a reasonable timeframe. We do have the future perfect tense to deal with that, but it's underused and probably will have dropped out of most dialects of English by the time we figure out how to use it as a way to note distinctness, like Latin does to a degree. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:19, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

I saw a sociolinguistic work (only one) that referred to "procrastination marker" and "procrastination aspect" in Southeast Asian languages. I don't really think that this is a dictionary-ready meaning, rather than a pragmatic consequence of the lack of specificity to the time frame.

Folks occasionally use the future perfect to convey definiteness. "I will have done it by then." But also, "I will do it by then." The burden of specificity is mostly carried by the adverbial. DCDuring TALK 17:07, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

That's a problem, though, when we drop adverbs and adverbial constructions in the interest of conciseness, as so often happens. I must figure out how to work a procrastination marker into my conlang :) --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:24, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

In my mind the "by and by" was automatically perceived as analogue to the Russian "потихоньку, полегоньку", roughly meaning "by quiet (steps), by light (steps)", with "по" as "by" and "ку" as diminutive suffixes signifying that the eventuality of getting somewhere "by and by" will be long to wait for. (0: --CopperKettle (talk) 06:20, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

in the by and by

In the by-and-by means "in the future" --Backinstadiums (talk) 11:38, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

bye and bye

this spelling appears here. —Soap— 22:03, 1 February 2024 (UTC)