Talk:bye

Sports

The position of a person or team in a tournament who draws no opponent in a particular round so advances to the next round unopposed; also the phantom opponent of such a person or team.

In league style tournaments, this is potentially confusing since there are no rounds in the sense of people advancing from one round to the next, but rather the team/person who has the bye simply doesn't play for that week/day/whatever. They don't get points, but as each team/person has a bye, it's works out the same in the end. Also the phrase "somone plays the bye next week" sounds strange to me. Perhaps it's only used in some sports or some forms of English. 'Team X has the bye next week' is the more normal phrase t me 203.109.240.93 16:29, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Where does this term come from? I've seen it more frequently spelled as "buy", which I trust could very well be wrong, but in any case, what relevance does this sports application have to the normal meaning of "bye", that is, "farewell", "goodbye"? LordAmeth 16:48, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

It isn't from bye = "goodbye", but rather a form of by. Ƿidsiþ 16:56, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

The History:

The earliest uses of "bye" (also spelled "by") were apparently in cricket, where it still means, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, "A run scored for a ball which passes the batsman, and which the wicket-keeper and long-stop fail to stop." Which means that a run is scored for a play which did not actually take place and the player "advances" without actually playing. This leads us to the more general sense of "bye" used in other sports, "The position of a player in a tournament who advances to the next round without playing, usually because there is an odd number of players."

English etymology no. 3 (male person)

Anyone know the etymology of this one? It doesn't seem to be strictly dialectic; I'm finding it from English texts all over the West. Any help would be appreciated, 'cuz nothing bothers me more than using a word and not being about to tell where it comes from! LovelyGarbage (talk) 02:40, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

It almost certainly is a dialect pronunciation of boy. It’s how it’s often said in Ireland and several people in Northern England, Wales and Scotland also say it like that. The Newfoundland quote reflects the essentially Irish (Waterford/Wexford) accent that they have there, despite it being Canadian, due to being founded by immigrants from South East Ireland. Other weird pronunciations like ‘buhy ’ and ‘bay’ can be found in Devon (https://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/discovering/dialect/your_dialect.shtml) and the East Anglian word bor is often considered to be from either boy or neighbour, though here on Wiktionary a derivation from an Old English word related to boor is preferred.Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:10, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

RFV discussion: November–December 2021

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bye

Rfv-sense: A dwelling MooreDoor (talk) 22:23, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

I vaguely recall seeing this somewhere, but I can't find anything from searching. I did add a few missing meanings. Kiwima (talk) 21:18, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

It feels familiar to me, too. It's in a few other dictionaries, one of which cites "Gibson". Searching is ... challenging. - -sche (discuss) 09:35, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

OED has this under by, defined as “a place of habitation; a village or town” (so not exactly a dwelling, which is narrower). The MED (bī) does define it as, among other things, a dwelling, so perhaps that sense did not survive into modern English. It is marked obsolete in the OED, though there is one 19th-century quote and one 20th-century one (spelled bye). Essentially it is a doublet of -by which is used to form placenames in Britain. — SGconlaw (talk) 19:00, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

RFV-failed Kiwima (talk) 20:02, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Scottish English Adverb?

Under "English", "Etymology 1", there is a meaning labeled "(Scottish)", which seems to frequently occur in the expressions "up bye" and "down bye". I'm not too familiar with this usage or dialect, but, to me, it looks a lot more like an adverb than a noun, and sometimes looks like it might even be interpretable (likely wrongly) as a preposition (like "by"). In fact, I struggle to see how it could possibly be interpreted as a noun. DubleH (talk) 06:28, 17 August 2022 (UTC)