byway
- noun
- /ˈbaɪˌweɪ/
- With maps in hand, geographers and students prowl city streets and rural byways to study landscapes and collect data for their inquiries.
- highways and byways
- streets and byways
Examples
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They decided to take a less traveled byway to avoid the heavy traffic on the main road.
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Look, put me up to his lordship As the man who knows the highways and byways.
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Each careful step along the byway
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Now the king watched every road and byway in search of new wealth.
Fiction book (2000) -
So, what makes you two take to the byways?
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But it's in the byways that the secrets and wonders lie.
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Nature's fury when man and beast collide on the back roads and byways of America.
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Best of all was to avoid him and glide along, invisible, in the shy, sly, slinking byways of life.
Fiction book (2000) -
Here and there the gaunt brick skeleton of a villa looms over a greening field, and down a byway that branches from the ancient Rd.
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As we hiked, we discovered a quiet byway that led us through beautiful fields.
Synonyms
A path or road from one place to another
A way to reach a goal or succeed
A small quiet road used to avoid traffic and reach local homes
A narrow passage between buildings in a town or city
A small quiet street away from the main road or a less known place
A small quiet side road in the countryside
A small quiet path in the countryside that few people use
Antonyms
How Major
Surface Forms
Morphology
byway = way (semi-transparent) = by + way
The components 'by' and 'way' are recognizable, but the specific sense 'minor or less-used road' relies on a somewhat restricted/older sense of 'by' meaning 'side' or 'secondary', which may not be fully obvious to all learners. [Postprocessing: moved 'by' from base_words to prefix]
Etymology
Byway comes from the parts by meaning 'side' or 'near' and way meaning 'road', so a byway is a road at the side of the main road — a small, quiet country track.