How to Use byword in a Sentence

byword

noun
  • Mom's favorite byword is “You can get more flies with honey than with vinegar”.
  • Detroit would emerge smaller, but no longer a byword for decline.
    — The Economist, 16 Sep. 2017
  • Their names were a byword for the very idea of Entertainment writ large.
    — Christina Catherine Martinez, Los Angeles Times, 8 June 2022
  • Leverkusen, the club that used to be a byword for failure, enjoy winning too much to stop now.
    — Rafa Honigstein and Seb Stafford-Bloor, The Athletic, 14 Apr. 2024
  • One of its largest cities has become a byword for racial injustice — and for deadly riots.
    — Griff Witte, Washington Post, 25 Oct. 2020
  • The exhibits will give a more nuanced view of a ruler whose name has become a byword for marauding in the west.
    — Mark Ellwood, AFAR Media, 8 May 2025
  • India has long been a byword for overpopulation, but this is about to change.
    — Sadanand Dhume, WSJ, 23 Dec. 2021
  • Blackpool, a once-lively seaside resort in the north-west, is a byword for decline.
    — The Economist, 18 Dec. 2019
  • Timbuktu has become a byword for the farthest corner of the earth.
    — National Geographic, 12 June 2016
  • For most of the past decade the giants of cloud computing were a byword for not needing anyone's money.
    — Dara-Abasi Ita, Forbes.com, 11 June 2026
  • But for just as long, his name and claims had become bywords for suspicious police encounters.
    — Meher Ahmad, New York Times, 23 Jan. 2018
  • Auschwitz has become a byword for the mass murder and bestiality of the Nazi regime.
    — Literary Hub, 17 Sep. 2025
  • In the past decade, the nation’s rail network had become a byword for corruption, delays and filth.
    — Ismail Dilawar, Bloomberg.com, 12 Apr. 2018
  • Now Bucha is a byword for war crimes, like Srebrenica or My Lai.
    — Time, 14 Apr. 2022
  • The months-long battle for Bakhmut has become the latest byword of destruction in the conflict.
    — Guy Davies, ABC News, 23 Apr. 2023
  • The key to a decent production of this show is detail — and that's Weinstein's byword here.
    — Chris Jones, chicagotribune.com, 10 Sep. 2017
  • Yes, that Hitler, the one who presided over an empire of mass murder, whose name is essentially a byword for evil.
    — David Sims, The Atlantic, 17 Oct. 2019
  • Good morning, Resilience has to be the business byword of 2023.
    — Alan Murray, Fortune, 29 Mar. 2023
  • West Ham, Prague aside, have become a byword for underachievement.
    — Tim Spiers, The Athletic, 16 Feb. 2025
  • Robinhood, the brokerage that has become a byword for the boom in retail trading, is planning to go public.
    — John Detrixhe, Quartz, 24 Mar. 2021
  • Once tourist fodder, the musical has remained a byword for hokey commercialism.
    — Theater Critic, Los Angeles Times, 1 May 2026
  • Many of the venues are completed, Tokyo has abundant infrastructure and Japan is a byword for know-how.
    — Stephen Wade, chicagotribune.com, 24 July 2019
  • But most of the women shunned their former friend, viewing his actions as uncouth in an era when discretion was the byword of elite society.
    — Meilan Solly, Smithsonian Magazine, 31 Jan. 2024
  • The Balkans have long been a byword for political and ethnic volatility, but things have worsened of late.
    — Andrea Dudik, Bloomberg.com, 25 Jan. 2023
  • Yet Britain’s utilities and services such as the railways were hardly a byword for efficiency in their state-run days.
    — The Economist, 17 May 2018
  • As part of the Panasonic empire, Technics was once a byword for hi-fi in the 1980s.
    — Mark Sparrow, Forbes, 7 Jan. 2025
  • Bucha, a leafy suburb of Kyiv where the couple shared a house made of brownstone, has become a byword for Russian atrocities.
    — Shira Pinson, NBC News, 14 Sep. 2022
  • Both were a byword, too, for male beauty, fully alive to the almost laughable impact of their handsomeness, yet ill at ease, now and then, with their perches on the pedestal.
    — Anthony Lane, New Yorker, 18 Sep. 2025
  • Ibiza in Spain's Balearic Islands is a byword for nightlife, drawing cool crowds who seriously like to party.
    — Chris Dwyer, CNN, 15 July 2021
  • For several years, this hyperspeed offshoot of early '90s rave music (think hip-hop rhythms on crystal meth) was a byword for bad taste.
    — Hari Kunzru, WIRED, 1 Dec. 1997

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'byword.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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