get by
"get-by" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“get by” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 6
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To subsist; to succeed, survive, or manage, at least at a minimal level.
Corpus desk
Index EN-get-by · get by · English
get by · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 6 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "G" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | get by |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 6 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “get by” in English
Rare enough to double-check
get by is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To subsist; to succeed, survive, or manage, at least at a minimal level.".
get by has no tracked misspelling variants, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is get by, spelled G-E-T- -B-Y.
Definition
- 1To subsist; to succeed, survive, or manage, at least at a minimal level.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how get by appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Do you think they can get by on only one salary?
Good girls do bad things sometimes / But we get by with it / Good girls do bad things sometimes / But we get by with it
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.