Word.ws English Dictionary

scratching by

scratching by is the present participle and gerund 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 scratching by

What is scratching by the present participle and gerund of?
Scratching by is the present participle and gerund of scratch by.

Words near scratching by in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scratching 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.

Last updated:

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