Talk:hard to come by

hard to come by
SoP, hard + to + come by. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:56, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Right. Doesn't even seem worth a redirect. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 16:51, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I dunno. It's not quite a fixed expression — "easy to come by" (especially in negative), "difficult to come by", "hard for ____ to come by", and so on are all well attested — but on the other hand it's much more natural to say that goals are "hard to come by" than to talk about a team (not) "coming by" a goal. gets only two hits in this sense on the entire Web, and  and  and  each get none. While  does get relevant hits, they're in the form of "hard to come by goals" and so on. (Incidentally, that search also pulls up an interesting example where "hard to come by" is an adjective premodifying "goals", which I find crazy.) Probably we should cover this at [[come by]], but I'm not convinced our current entry there is doing the job. —Ruakh TALK 18:20, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * No OneLook Reference except the Online Talking Dictionary has this. come by is in the fuller dictionaries and idiom/phrasal-verb dictionaries. If we came back to this in 50 years, it might seem more archaic and more idiomatic. At the very least "hard/easy to come by" should both be usexed at come by. DCDuring TALK 20:03, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Failed RFD. Equinox ◑ 22:04, 17 July 2011 (UTC)