How to Use scrape by in a Sentence

scrape by

verb
  • At $1,800 gold, many mines were just scraping by.
    — Frank Holmes, Forbes.com, 15 Sep. 2025
  • It's also walled off its site from being scraped by external agents.
    — Annie Palmer, CNBC, 27 May 2026
  • The other is barely scraping by.
    — R. Eric Thomas, Mercury News, 26 May 2026
  • For my young family scraping by month to month, these benefits felt like real help.
    — Torrey Snow, Baltimore Sun, 15 Apr. 2026
  • Here, hotels can’t just scrape by with formulaic concepts.
    — Su-Jit Lin, Southern Living, 27 Dec. 2025
  • The institution is no longer camping out, scraping by, or making do.
    — Justin Davidson, Curbed, 3 Nov. 2025
  • The family lived in a trailer, scraping by while trying to give their son a shot at an unlikely dream.
    — Preston Fore, Fortune, 15 June 2026
  • The rest of the time, Meyer is scraping by to provide necessities for her children.
    — Megan Garnai, IndyStar, 10 Sep. 2025
  • The family scraped by during the Depression by renting out to boarders.
    — Nino Paoli, Fortune, 15 Aug. 2025
  • Any notion that the Broncos were scraping by was met with a mouthful of bristles from Sean Payton.
    — Luca Evans, Denver Post, 25 Feb. 2026
  • The Toledo Truth Teller once occupied a bustling newsroom but now scrapes by with about a dozen people.
    — Emma Alpern, Vulture, 11 Sep. 2025
  • Until the season gets going after the year-end holidays, everyone on the Gulf is scraping by.
    — Stephen King, The Atlantic, 15 May 2026
  • While billionaires are getting richer, Americans are scraping by on their measly paychecks.
    — Preston Fore, Fortune, 4 Nov. 2025
  • Many are in their 70s or older, hauling tens of kilograms of cardboard for a pittance in order to scrape by in one of Asia’s richest cities.
    — Catherine Phillips, CNN Money, 24 May 2026
  • While lower-income households are struggling to scrape by, middle- and higher-income households are on firmer financial footing, buoyed by stronger wage growth.
    — Mary Cunningham, CBS News, 17 Nov. 2025
  • While many minority health research projects have seen their grants terminated, others managed to scrape by with funding intact.
    — Surina Venkat, The Hill, 8 Nov. 2025
  • Owning a home was, in Seymour’s view, the ticket from just scraping by, or even living on the streets, to financial stability.
    — Andre Mouchard, Sacbee.com, 22 Apr. 2026
  • In McDowell County, people face two choices – stay and scrape by or scrape together enough money to leave.
    — Cecilia Vega, CBS News, 23 Feb. 2026
  • Instead, Lynch barely scraped by Bella at Clash in Paris, suggesting there is more story to tell between these two stars.
    — Blake Oestriecher, Forbes.com, 31 Aug. 2025
  • Putting money toward improving infrastructure and modernization won’t go very far in hospitals that are barely scraping by.
    — Daniel Torrent, STAT, 25 Feb. 2026
  • Los Angeles scraped by in the playoffs thanks to a historically dominant starting rotation — and by using those starters as relievers.
    — Shaun McAvoy, MSNBC Newsweek, 29 Nov. 2025
  • That’s still too pricey for most in a country where millions scrape by on sporadic income from street vending, domestic work, construction and other iterations of the informal economy.
    — Mery Mogollon, Los Angeles Times, 30 Jan. 2026
  • The kitchen and bathrooms were fully renovated, the original wide-plank floors throughout were scraped by hand, and windows overlooking the rear garden were expanded, flooding the breakfast room with natural light.
    — David Foxley, Architectural Digest, 25 Feb. 2026
  • Deploying some zone defense, Denver scraped by for five minutes, outscoring the Warriors by two before subbing Jokic and Watson back in together.
    — Bennett Durando, Denver Post, 30 Mar. 2026
  • While the additional dollars are welcome, tribal leaders say the deeper issue is the volatility itself, and the fact that even doubling funding still leaves many TCUs scraping by.
    — Ana Pelayo Connery, USA Today, 18 Nov. 2025
  • Liverpool eventually scraped by 5-4.
    — Megan Feringa, New York Times, 11 Aug. 2025
  • Unlike the boho types of Girls and last year’s Adults, who scrape by in the outer boroughs, however, these pals live in Manhattan’s fratty Murray Hill neighborhood.
    — Judy Berman, Time, 1 June 2026
  • But despite touching on the disparities of class, income and opportunity in America and the fragility — even futility — of hope for many people barely scraping by, the script’s universal truths land with a soft impact.
    — David Rooney, HollywoodReporter, 14 Aug. 2025
  • The creator economy, valued at over $250 billion and projected to hit $480 billion by 2027, is booming, but most creators are barely scraping by.
    — Tomer Warschauer Nuni, Forbes.com, 7 Aug. 2025
  • This comes a week after Arkansas State scraped by Texas State following head coach GJ Kinne's decision to score a touchdown with one minute remaining rather than run out the clock to kick a field goal.
    — Caleb Yum, Austin American Statesman, 12 Oct. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'scrape by.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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