I HAVE A GRIPE WITH THE WAY PEOPLE SPELL “BY” AND “BYE”

            I have a gripe with the way “bye” has been shoved aside by the word “by”.  I think of “by” as pertaining to means or method, as in “We’ll go by car,” and “By any means”, while I think of “bye” as having to do with location or position, as in “Bye the way”, and “As time went bye”. Most clear, perhaps in this case is the expression they use in sports tournaments when one team does not have to play, as in “The Lions get a bye in the first round.”      

               Other examples of this confusion about which word to use when occur to me to be “You’ll hear from me bye the bye”, “Goodbye”, and “She parked in a lay bye” which usually gets misspelled as “Layby”. I know this is not a big thing to worry about, but when one has been a lousy speller all their life, especially as an erstwhile writer, small things begin to matter. When I was a kid there was a song titled “I’ll Get By”, which only makes sense when it is spelled “I’ll Get Bye”.  Here again, the issue seems to be one of quality of life, not one of instrumentation.

            To “just get bye” seems to be more of a problem. Is it about method or instrumentation, or is it about location, as in “Slide bye”, as in “Slide through life?” , or as in “Slide bye the table”? What about to “slide bye” with a passing grade? I guess what we are watching here is the evolution of language. Then there is good old “Goodby(e). Surely not about location or means, unless, of course, one means to call attention to enjoyment of the journey. I think this has to do with the quality of one’s trip, as in “have a good trip”.

               These sentences have all been written “by” Jerry Gill. That’s clearly instrumentation. What about “Stand Bye”? Does it mean simply “wait”?  If you are on “Stand bye” for the next airplane it would seem to indicate your mode of existence, namely waiting. But when someone says “Please Stand Bye” it usually means to keep listening. Words are tricky – and these two simple words are very tricky. In the Army the drill master sometimes says “Call off by the numbers”. This calls for reciting the numerals in their regular sequence. Probably neither location nor means – I think?