Word.ws English Dictionary

getting by

getting by is the present participle and gerund 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 getting by

What is getting by the present participle and gerund of?
Getting by is the present participle and gerund of get by.

Words near getting by in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: getting 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: “getting by.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/getting_by. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.