come by
Britishverb
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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 This usage, dating from about 1600, superseded the earlier sense of acquiring something with considerable effort.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 .
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Stop in, visit, as in Please come by whenever you're in the neighborhood . [Late 1800s]
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
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
Exact data for whey prices is harder to come by than for some other commodities, and historical comparisons aren’t always readily available.
From MarketWatch • Jun. 11, 2026
While he can still get beef and chicken, vegetables and lentils are hard to come by.
From BBC • Jun. 2, 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
“We thought we’d come by to say hi.”
From "Shouting at the Rain" by Lynda Mullaly Hunt
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
