Word.ws English Dictionary

scratched by

scratched by is the simple past and past participle of scratch by.

Meaning of scratch by

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

Questions about scratched by

What is scratched by the simple past and past participle of?
Scratched by is the simple past and past participle of scratch by.

Words near scratched by in the dictionary

  1. scratched
  2. scratched a living
  3. scratched an itch
  4. scratched below the surface
  5. scratched beneath the surface
  6. scratched by
  7. scratched one's head
  8. scratched one's own itch
  9. scratched out
  10. scratched that
  11. scratched the surface

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scratched by (page history and authors); 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.

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