by-and-by

1. 1.

   an indefinite time in the future

   “he'll get around to it in the sweet by-and-by”

   Broaderfuture

Questions about by-and-by

What does by-and-by mean?

by-and-by means "an indefinite time in the future".

How many syllables are in by-and-by?

by-and-by has 2 syllables and divides as by-and--by under the regular spelling rules. It is not in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, so that comes from how the word is written rather than from a recorded pronunciation, and no stress or phonetic transcription is claimed for it.

Is by-and-by a common word?

by-and-by is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.