come by


verb
  1. (intr, preposition) to find or obtain (a thing), esp accidentally: do you ever come by any old books?

Words Nearby come by

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

How to use come by in a sentence

  • Armstrong made answer and said, "He will come by-and-by; you shall have him."

  • Poor cottagers living beside a highroad don't open too easily at this hour to a couple of come-by-chance wayfarers.

    Two Sides of the Face | Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
  • It will come by-and-by and all day long, In that old quiet house I told you of: We sleep safe there.

    Browning's England | Helen Archibald Clarke
  • By nature, I mean simply the present state of things, whether designed by an intelligent mind, or a mere come-by-chance.

    Modern Skepticism | C. J. Ellicott
  • It was whispered about that you were a come-by-chance child, and your mother was a bad woman.

    The Day of Judgment | Joseph Hocking

Other Idioms and Phrases with come by

come by

Acquire, obtain, as in A good assistant is hard to come by. This usage, dating from about 1600, superseded the earlier sense of acquiring something with considerable effort. A variant is come by honestly, meaning “to obtain in some honorable or logical way.” For example, I'm sure she didn't come by that large bonus honestly or He does have an unusual gait but he came by it honestly; his father's is the same.

The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.