make do1
Manage with the limited or inadequate means available: Dad would have to make do with an old car...
- People with learning difficulties no longer have to make do with what is available.
- Many more channels are available nowadays, even if some of us still make do with the five.
- Aided by support staff and by reading specialists, teachers made do with the pedagogical knowledge and skills that were available to them.
Synonyms
scrape by/along, get by/along, manage, cope, survive, muddle through/along, fare all right, make the best of a bad job, improvise, make ends meet, keep the wolf from the door, keep one's head above water, shift for oneself
informal make out
make the best of, get by with/on, put to the best use, make the most of
See parent entry: make
make-do2
/meɪkˈduː
/adjective [attributive]
Makeshift; temporary: make-do shelters dotted the landscape...
- Recreation was not yet a pressing problem since we did not have any free time and were too exhausted for anything other than resting in our make-do shelters.
- And the Blues' boss is extremely unlikely to tinker around with a mend and make-do loan move, or a temporary quick fix.
- In any case, we accepted that living in Britain meant being mired in a historical backwater, that our culture was a threadbare, make-do shadow of America's.