by-gone

A form of bygone — Having been or happened in the distant past.

Meanings

adjectiveby-gone (not comparable)
  1. datednot comparableDated form of bygone.

    By-gone Tourist Days

    1900, Laura G. Collins, By-gone Tourist Days: Letters of Travel, Cincinnati, Oh.: The Robert Clarke Company, title page
    4 more examples

    I had thought (Sir) to haue held my peace, vntill / You had drawne Oathes from him, not to ſtay: you (Sir) / Charge him too coldly. Tell him, you are ſure / All in Bohemia’s well: this ſatisfaction, / The by-gone-day proclaym’d, ſay this to him, / He’s beat from his beſt ward.

    c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii], page 277, column 2

    The Regal, or perhaps the hypercritical will have it the Reginal Kennel I am acquainted with in by-gone days, even before Bagshot Heath and its environs were enclosed; […]

    1838 October 7, “Quartogenarian” [pseudonym], “Suggestions on Kennel Lameness”, in The Sporting Magazine, or Monthly Calendar of the Transactions of The Turf, The Chase, and Every Other Diversion Interesting to the Man of Pleasure, Enterprize and Spirit, volume XVIII, number CIII (November 1838), second series, London, published 1839, page 40

    […] as we rode on, we saw gigantic pine, cedar, and hiccory trees, torn up by the roots, and scattered over the surrounding country, by by-gone hurricanes, many of them hundreds of yards from the spot that nurtured their roots—while the gnarled branches lying across our track, scorched black with the lightning, or from long exposure to a burning sun, impeded our advance, and made the journey anything but pleasant.

    [1853], J[ohn] Benwell, chapter V, in An Englishman’s Travels in America: His Observations of Life and Manners in the Free and Slave States, London: Binns and Goodwin, […], →OCLC, pages 157–158

    Two centuries of German poetry lived in this old German flower garden, from the crude florilegiums of Baroque lyric to Eichendorff, who in its after-life, while looking back on so much by-gone glory, became its truest expression, as formulated by a new spirit, since poetry is the first and final need of the human soul, for which reality does not suffice.

    2006, Rudolf Borchardt, translated by Henry Martin, “The Garden and the Human Being”, in The Passionate Gardener, Kingston, N.Y.: McPherson & Company, published 2010, →ISBN, pages 50–51
Cite this entry
APA

by-gone. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/by-gone

MLA

“by-gone.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/by-gone. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “by-gone,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/by-gone.

Source: by-gone on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.