come by

British  

verb

1. (intr, preposition) to find or obtain (a thing), esp accidentally

   do you ever come by any old books?

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come by Idioms  

1. 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 This usage, dating from about 1600, superseded the earlier sense of acquiring something with considerable effort.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 .

2. Stop in, visit, as in Please come by whenever you're in the neighborhood . [Late 1800s]

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Example Sentences

Just minutes before our interview, a hotel staffer came by to shake JOP’s hand, as if the two had known each other for years.

From Los Angeles Times

Analysts have been waiting for a ruling on the tariffs case, with many expecting it to come by the end of January.

From Barron's

It also felt like something only you could make, and that is rare to come by in our line of work.

From Los Angeles Times

She believes additional gains will be hard to come by in 2026.

From Barron's

Good information remained hard to come by, right up to the invention of the internet—as anyone who remembers card catalogs can tell you.

From The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

• come over
• drop by
• drop in