Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
By-product \By"-prod`uct\, n. A secondary or additional product; something produced, as in the course of a manufacture, in addition to the principal product.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
n. 1 A secondary product; something made incidentally during the production of something else. 2 A side effect.
WordNet
Wikipedia
A by-product is a secondary product derived from a manufacturing process or chemical reaction. It is not the primary product or service being produced. In the context of production, a by-product is the 'output from a joint production process that is minor in quantity and/or net realizable value (NRV) when compared to the main products'. Because they are deemed to have no influence on reported financial results, by-products do not receive allocations of joint costs. By-products also by convention are not inventoried, but the NRV from by-products is typically recognized as 'other income' or as a reduction of joint production processing costs when the by-product is produced. A by-product can be useful and marketable or it can be considered waste.
IEA offers the following definition for the purpose of life-cycle assessment:
... main products, co-products (which involve similar revenues to the main product), by-products (which result in smaller revenues), and waste products (which provide little or no revenue).Usage examples of "by-product".
Evidently one by-product of the respiration of these water-plants was alcohol, and, having no outlet, the lake had turned into a great tub of wine.
The poison rain was a soup of industrial by-products, still falling from their long sojourn in the upper atmosphere.
The canapes she keeps waving under all the old noses are soda crackers pooped on with meat by-products.
In like manner, inks composed of by-products of coal tar, can be effectively treated, when irradicable with plain water or soap and water.
Teamsters wearing Joe Namath satin shirts with Fonz hair styles is another by-product of the newly won control of our neurogenetic brain sequences.
The disembodied voiceover is saying how the Num Num Snack Factory takes meat by-products, whatever you have your tongues or hearts or lips or genitals chews them up, seasons them, and poops them out in the shape of a spade or a diamond or a club onto your choice of cracker for you to eat yourself.
Samples of tissue from his bronchia and lungs showed a massive short-term buildup of carbon and other by-products of combustion.
Aside from the hands-on things one learns about dogs, dog care, dog gear, racing strategy, and the like, there is also a body of knowledge that comes to the musher seconthand, by-products of the life dogs have caused the musher to lead.
Because neither we nor they can afford to have the Jordanian monarchy overthrown as a by-product of an invasion of Iraq, Riyadh must understand that this is part of the price for conducting a full-scale invasion--something it wants.
Bramfell, in a small village known as Sheepcote, so named because its inhabitants worked with either sheep or their by-products.
The investigations also bear directly on the coking processes, especially the by-product process, as showing the varying proportion of each of the volatile products derivable from types of coals occurring in the various coal fields of the United States, the time and temperature at which these distillates are given off, the variation in quality and quantity of the products, according to the conditions of temperature, and, in addition, explain the deterioration of coals in storage, etc.
In like manner, inks composed of by-products of coal tar, can be effectively treated, when irradicable with plain water or soap and water.
Metals and fossil fuels are nonrenewable, and the ability of Earth to absorb contaminants and by-products was already being strained by our present stable global population of 2,800,000,000.
Oleic acid a by-product of the candle industry, is extensively used under the name of cloth oil, there is also used oleine, or wool oil, obtained by the distillation of Yorkshire grease.
Up in the woods of Canada last summer I found a chemist trying to do with the wood waste what Remsen and Perkin and others have done with coal waste, and I cannot resist the suggestion of my metaphor that there in the forest valleys beyond the Alleghanies the elements and conditions were found to convert this Atlantic by-product, unpromising outwardly, into the substance of a new and precious civilization.