noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   An election held to fill a political office that has become vacant between general elections.

   "Coordinate term: general election"

2. 2
   a special election between regular elections wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

bye-electionbypollcaucuselectionprimaryreferendum

Example

More examples

"A by-election will be held in this constituency in a month's time."

Etymology

From by- (“side, secondary, ancillary”) + election.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.