Word.ws English Dictionary

gets by

gets by is the third-person singular simple present indicative of get by.

Meaning of get by

Verb

get by (third-person singular simple present gets by, present participle getting by, simple past got by, past participle (UK) got by or (US) gotten by)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To subsist; to succeed, survive, or manage, at least at a minimal level.
    • Do you think they can get by on only one salary?

Questions about gets by

What is gets by the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Gets by is the third-person singular simple present indicative of get by.

Words near gets by in the dictionary

  1. gets between
  2. gets blood from a stone
  3. gets blood from a turnip
  4. gets blood out of a stone
  5. gets busy
  6. gets by
  7. gets by the balls
  8. gets by with
  9. gets changed
  10. gets cold feet
  11. gets cracking

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gets by (page history and authors); get 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: “gets by.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gets_by. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.