fall by the wayside
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Fail or be abandoned due to lack of progress or support
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
Thất bại hoặc bị bỏ rơi do thiếu tiến bộ hoặc hỗ trợ
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: objects falling beside a path
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
In any event, the idea that Lazarsfeld had discovered a ubiquitous method of social research has to fall by the wayside.
For years, the Mandarin Oriental () was synonymous with Hong Kong, but the old favourite is falling by the wayside.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “fall by the wayside” mean?
Fail or be abandoned due to lack of progress or support Literally: objects falling beside a path
Is “fall by the wayside” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.