Whereby
adv ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 By what, in which direction; how. interrogative, not-comparable, obsolete
"Whereby goest thou?"
- 2 By which. not-comparable
"Shylock: Nay, take my life and all; pardon not that: You take my house when you do take the prop That doth sustain my house; you take my life When you do take the means whereby I live."
- 3 Where, wherein, in which. nonstandard, not-comparable
"Because COBOL does not have a date type, some implementations rely instead on a system whereby all dates are coded to a reference point. The most commonly used is May 20, 1875, as this was the date of an international standards-setting conference held in Paris, known as the Convention du Mètre."
Example
More examples"Knowing very well that his wife wanted to go to a movie, the husband, who was a dog in the manger, cooked up a scheme whereby they had to stay at home waiting for a certain visitor who was not expected to come."
Etymology
From where + by.
More for "whereby"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.