highways and byways

highways and byways

Both major and minor or lesser-traveled roads. (Often used figuratively to describe paths taken in life.) I'm taking the summer to travel across the Midwest, driving through highways and byways to find all sorts of unique places. By highways and byways, he ended up making a life for himself in a small village in India.
See also: and, highway
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

highways and byways

 
1. major and minor roads. The city council voted to plant new trees along all the highways and byways of the town.
2. Cliché routes and pathways, both major and minor. I hope I meet you again some day on life's highways and byways.
See also: and, highway
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.

ˌhighways and ˈbyways

(on/along) all the roads, large and small, of a country, an area, etc: She travelled the highways and byways of Scotland collecting folk songs and local traditions.
A byway is a small road.
See also: and, highway
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary
See also:
  • play second fiddle
  • play second fiddle to
  • play second fiddle, to
  • up on
  • up on (something)
  • barnstorm
  • milk
  • milk (someone or something) dry
  • milk/suck somebody/something dry
  • milk for
References in classic literature
I exulted in the boundless freedom of the design; the open air of that immense scene, where adventure followed adventure with the natural sequence of life, and the days and the nights were not long enough for the events that thronged them, amidst the fields and woods, the streams and hills, the highways and byways, hostelries and hovels, prisons and palaces, which were the setting of that matchless history.
In reality he was much in earnest and sometimes suffered prolonged periods of re- morse because he could not go crying the word of God in the highways and byways of the town.
The Wienermobile has been traveling the highways and byways of the United States since 1936 and a visit with the crew -- called hot-doggers -- is always a chance to share some fun and puns.
Dubai: Commuters on Sunday started out their first day of the week in heavy traffic jams after a number of accidents broke out across busy highways and byways.
Over 130 color watercolors by Pat Hunter captures lovely landscapes, while the blend of memoir, travelogue, history and artistic impressions of highways and byways offer armchair readers a satisfying blend of art book and travel memoir that's delightfully unique and beautifully presented.
Doctors Pixie McKenna and Phil Kieran will be taking to the highways and byways to talk about various taboo illnesses.
They take you around the highways and byways of suburbia.
Work across borders for a better NHS THE noblest prospect that we in Wales may enjoy are the highways and byways that lead to health care over the border.
Until this country's highways and byways are free of potholes, hot-headed drivers and huge volumes of heavy, dangerous traffic, few of us will be persuaded to hop aboard a computer-controlled and highly vulnerable box on wheels.
Indeed, it's well known that David Batty simply saw his career as a job - and there have been plenty of others down the years like him up and down the highways and byways of the English game.
WHO is responsible for the funding and erection of the large, and intrusive, yellow signs that have exploded upon the highways and byways of the North East?
Each week it travelled the highways and byways of Britain to meet the regular people living here.
WHAT planet are the folks in charge of our highways and byways living on?
Take to the highways and byways at 5am on a summer's morning, when you have the whole world to yourself apart from a few early bird farmers, and no enthusiast could want for more.