come by

British  

verb

1. (intr, preposition) to find or obtain (a thing), esp accidentally

   do you ever come by any old books?

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come by Idioms  

1. Acquire, obtain, as in A good assistant is hard to come by . This usage, dating from about 1600, superseded the earlier sense of acquiring something with considerable effort. A variant is come by honestly , meaning “to obtain in some honorable or logical way.” For example, I'm sure she didn't come by that large bonus honestly or He does have an unusual gait but he came by it honestly; his father's is the same .

2. Stop in, visit, as in Please come by whenever you're in the neighborhood . [Late 1800s]

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Example Sentences

Bankruptcy is a real possibility, he said, if a refund doesn’t come by July for the $175,000 in extra tariffs he paid on imported stock for his Tampa-based luxury online retailer over the past year.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 31, 2026

It came at a cost as homegrown talents in the generations that followed found opportunities in the top flight increasingly hard to come by.

From BBC • Mar. 25, 2026

Land, skilled construction crews, and power are becoming harder to come by.

From Barron's • Feb. 27, 2026

Outside of Summers’ voluntary resignations, consequences for American politicians who appear in the Epstein files have been hard to come by.

From Salon • Feb. 25, 2026

He had a hard look in his eye, and I've been around Underhill long enough to know a guy doesn't come by that kind of coldness so casual.

From "How It Went Down" by Kekla Magoon

Related Words

• come over
• drop by
• drop in