Contextualizebeta

scratch by

verb

Etymology

From scratch + by.

  1. derived from *h₁epi✻
  2. inherited from *bi✻
  3. inherited from *bī✻
  4. inherited from bī
  5. inherited from by
  6. formed as scratch by — “scratch + by”

Definitions

  1. To get by

    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.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for scratch by. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA