bye
/baɪ/noun, adjective, interjection
bye is spelled B-Y-E: 3 letters and one syllable. It appears 25 times per million words in written English, the 3,683rd most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). People search “by vs bye” about 390 times a month (Google, United States). As a noun, bye means “The position of a person or team in a tournament or competition who draws no opponent in a particular round so advances to the next round unopposed…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of bye is byes.
How many letters and syllables are in bye?
| Letters | 3: B-Y-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 25 times per million words; the 3,683rd most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Pairs people search | |
| Sounds like | |
| Same letters |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is bye?
Bye appears 25 times per million words in written English, the 3,683rd most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce bye?
- /baɪ/
- /bɑːj/
Bye has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-bye.ogg, En-au-bye.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with bye
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sounds like: bi, buy, by (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
What rhymes with bye?
No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as bye.
Spelled with the same letters in another order: bey.
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of bye
- byes plural
- more bye comparative
- most bye superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does bye mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The position of a person or team in a tournament or competition who draws no opponent in a particular round so advances to the next round unopposed, or is awarded points for a win in a league table; also the phantom opponent of such a person or team.
Craig's Crew plays the bye next week.
- 2
An extra scored when the batsmen take runs after the ball has passed the striker without hitting either the bat or the batsman.
- 3
obsoleteA thing not directly aimed at; a secondary or subsidiary object, course, path, undertaking, issue, etc.
- 4
ScotlandAn unspecified way or place.
- 5
A pass.
- 6
A command to exit a session.
- 7
Eye dialect spelling of boy.
adjective
- 1
Out of the way; remote.
- 2
Secondary; supplementary.
interjection
- 1
colloquialGoodbye.
- 2
slangAn exclamation of disbelief or dismissal.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Bye in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense short for goodbye – see also goodbye:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | salut |
| German | baba, tschüss, tschö, tschau |
| Portuguese | tchau, até mais |
| Spanish | adiós, chau, chao, bay, agur, abur |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does bye come from?
Variant form of by, from Old English bī (“being near”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).