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 This usage, dating from about 1600, superseded the earlier sense of acquiring something with considerable effort.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

"It's been hard to come by over the years when playing for Ireland, so we're desperate to get across that."

From BBC • Mar. 12, 2026

“If you have something that’s a gas guzzler and you want to save some gas, come by Mazda.”

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 10, 2026

Land, skilled construction crews, and power are becoming harder to come by.

From Barron's • Feb. 27, 2026

Outside of Summers’ voluntary resignations, consequences for American politicians who appear in the Epstein files have been hard to come by.

From Salon • Feb. 25, 2026

“I’ll come by tomorrow to help. I couldn’t today or yesterday I had to repair a lot of those puzzlers.”

From "Willodeen" by Katherine Applegate

Related Words

• come over
• drop by
• drop in