By-blow
noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A blow struck to the side or from the side, as in swordplay; a secondary or incidental strike of any sort.
"Either commander took speedy advantage of it—Hopton to make a swift diversion into Sussex and capture Arundel Castle (which was but a by-blow, for in a few weeks he had lost it again)."
- 2 the illegitimate offspring of unmarried parents wordnet
- 3 An illegitimate child; a child of an unknown or unmarried father. slang
"‘Nay,’ said the landlady, ‘if I thought he was a gentleman's son, thof he was a bye-blow, I should behave to him in another guess manner; for many of these bye-blows come to be great men, and, as my poor first husband used to say, never affront any customer that's a gentleman.’"
Example
More examples"Either commander took speedy advantage of it—Hopton to make a swift diversion into Sussex and capture Arundel Castle (which was but a by-blow, for in a few weeks he had lost it again)."
Etymology
From by- + blow.
More for "by-blow"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.