Word.ws English Dictionary

got by

got by is the simple past of get by.

got by is the past participle 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 got by

What is got by the simple past of?
Got by is the simple past of get by.

Words near got by in the dictionary

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

Source and license

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