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 This usage, dating from about 1600, superseded the earlier sense of acquiring something with considerable effort.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

See Examples For:

come by

Exact numbers of Afghan civilian deaths are harder to come by, but we know they are in the tens of thousands.

From Slate ● Sep. 11, 2026

Good news has been harder to come by.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 7, 2026

But depending on where you are, in-person sessions can be pricey, or hard to come by.

From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2026

Or at least it makes enough sense: In Mr. Simon’s own words, the lyrics “would come by you so quickly that all you would get was a feeling.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 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