Word.ws English Dictionary

came by

came by is the simple past and past participle of come by.

Meaning of come by

Verb

come by (third-person singular simple present comes by, present participle coming by, simple past came by, past participle come by)

  1. (transitive) To obtain; to get, especially by chance or involuntarily.
    • A loyal friend is hard to come by.
  2. (intransitive) To come near to; to pass; to visit.
    • Your beau came by while you were shopping.

See all 3 meanings of come by

Questions about came by

What is came by the simple past and past participle of?
Came by is the simple past and past participle of come by.

Words near came by in the dictionary

  1. came back from the dead
  2. came back to bite
  3. came back to haunt
  4. came before
  5. came between
  6. came by
  7. came calling
  8. came clean
  9. came down
  10. came down cats and dogs
  11. came down in stair rods

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: came by (page history and authors); come by (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “came by.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/came_by. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.