Word.ws English Dictionary

scratch by

scratch by verb: to get by; to make ends meet.

Verb

scratch by (third-person singular simple present scratches by, present participle scratching by, simple past and past participle scratched by)

  1. (idiomatic) To get by; to make ends meet.
    • It all works great for Walmart or the food-service company, but for people like Gina and her friend Nicole, it means they can barely scratch by.2017, Elizabeth Warren, This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class
    Synonyms:
    scrape by

Synonyms of scratch by

Forms of scratch by

third-person singular presentscratches by
present participlescratching by
past participlescratched by
pastscratched by

Origin of scratch by

From scratch + by.

Questions about scratch by

What does scratch by mean?
Scratch by means to get by; to make ends meet.
What part of speech is scratch by?
Scratch by is a verb.
What is the past tense of scratch by?
The past tense of scratch by is scratched by.

Words near scratch by in the dictionary

  1. scratch and sniff
  2. scratch below the surface
  3. scratch beneath the surface
  4. scratch brush
  5. scratch brushes
  6. scratch by
  7. scratch card
  8. scratch cards
  9. scratch comma
  10. scratch commas
  11. scratch hit

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scratch 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-scratch by.ogg.

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