get by

Questions about get by

What does get by mean?

get by means "succeed in doing, achieving, or producing (something) with the limited or inadequate means available". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for get by?

Close synonyms include cope, make out, make do, contend, grapple. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is get by a common word?

get by is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.