by
baɪ
Why 'by the window' and 'by Friday' are the same word
The picture A hand sweeps right past the side of something. As it passes, something happens, and a mark is left where it went by. WITH is the tool held in the hand; BY is the hand that actually did it and moved on.
Where the picture shows up in by
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the seat right beside
Please sit by the window.
pliːz sɪt baɪ ðə ˈwɪndoʊ
Take the seat pushed right up against the window.
A chair pushed flat against the window, and someone sitting down in it.
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the hand that did it
This report was written by the intern.
ðɪs rɪˈpɔːrt wʌz ˈrɪtn baɪ ðiː ˈɪntɜːrn
The intern is the hand this report came out of.
Under the writing you can see the hand that pushed the pen across.
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the channel it rides
Please send the file by email.
pliːz send ðə faɪl baɪ ˈiːmeɪl
Let the file travel to me along the email route.
The file slides down a pipe labelled 'email' and drops out the far end.
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the line not to cross
Finish the report by Friday.
ˈfɪnɪʃ ðə rɪˈpɔːrt baɪ ˈfraɪdeɪ
Friday is the line, and the report has to be done before it goes past.
The work stops dead just in front of the Friday line on the calendar.
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the width of the gap
We missed the train by two minutes.
wiː mɪst ðə treɪn baɪ tuː ˈmɪnɪts
The train was already gone, and the gap we missed it by was two minutes.
A ruler measures the gap left between the departing train and your running feet.
All of it in one picture
BY is a line drawn right alongside. Draw it beside an object and you get a seat; run it under some writing and you get the hand that wrote it. Let a thing ride that line and you get a channel, draw it across a calendar and you get a deadline you must not cross, and pull two such lines apart and the gap between them is a margin. Wherever BY appears, the question is what it brushed past.