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 This usage, dating from about 1600, superseded the earlier sense of acquiring something with considerable effort.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

The basic creature comforts she had taken for granted in New York, where she lived before departing to teach dance in Havana in 1970, were hard to come by after years of Soviet subsidies.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 21, 2026

“Real freedom means being able to make independent choices about your own future,” Melania Trump said Thursday, but for foster children, that freedom can be hard to come by, even with a little extra funding.

From MarketWatch • Jun. 11, 2026

Philip is a harvester of periwinkles, but says the sea snails - a delicacy in the Niger Delta - are hard to come by these days in the mangroves and swamps.

From BBC • Jun. 3, 2026

Taking misoprostol alone has also become a standard treatment for unwanted pregnancies in countries where mifepristone is harder to come by.

From Slate • May 18, 2026

Sookie was a fourth-generation Rockport fisherman and he was a good friend of my parents’, except he hadn’t come by the house in a long time.

From "The Line Tender" by Kate Allen

Related Words

• come over
• drop by
• drop in