Spelling.School · How to spell

How to spell bye

hear itbye/baɪ/nounPrefixes and work

What it means: A farewell remark.

In a sentence: "Say bye to your friends when you leave the playground."

The part people get wrong

Often misspelled as by or buy.

Sounds like, but is not: by, buy. Same sound, different spelling and meaning.

Same family: byes, bye-week, first-round-bye, automatic-advance, tournament-bye. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: The sports meaning of "bye" grew from an earlier sense in cricket and golf, where a "bye" referred to runs or points scored in a non-standard way. Over time, it came to mean skipping a regular turn or round, which is how we use it in tournaments today.

Patterns it uses: i before e?

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