In the direction of a bend or toward bending; sideways or in a curved direction.
From 'bend' plus '-ways' (variant of '-wise,' from Old English 'wisan,' meaning direction). Archaic directional adverb, rarely if ever used in modern English.
'-ways' and '-wise' are ancient English methods of creating directional adverbs—'lengthwise,' 'clockwise,' and 'sidewise' are remnants of a more productive grammatical system we've mostly abandoned!
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