Word.ws English Dictionary

scratches by

scratches by is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 scratches by

What is scratches by the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Scratches by is the third-person singular simple present indicative of scratch by.

Words near scratches by in the dictionary

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

Source and license

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