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Glite Dictionary
to squeak through

to squeak through

2 5.8
Just barely manage to succeed or avoid failure
  • phrasal verb
  • Informal
: aprobar por poco
  • After a tough competition, she managed to squeak through the final round and secure first place.

Examples

  • It would appear a few of them squeaked through.

    Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

  • I'm behind at the moment, but I always manage to squeak through at the end.

    Blog text (30)

  • I just squeaked through myself.

    Honor Society (2022)

  • Maybe you managed to squeak through.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • This is how Japan squeaked through the 1990s.

    Blog text (3)

  • He'd squeaked through on that one.

    Fiction book (1994)

  • And I can maybe disguise myself and squeak through the cordon, but you?

    Batman and Harley Quinn (2017)

  • "After coming in dead last on the leaderboard, it seems highly unlikely she'll squeak through yet again.

    Blog text (21)

  • Amazingly, Carol enlisted in the Army, squeaked through boot camp, and lasted a few years there.

    Blog text (15)

  • In the high-pressure days leading up to the vote in November 1993, Clinton's pro-NAFTA forces expected to squeak through with little more than the 218 votes needed to win.

    Academic text (2005)

Synonyms

to slip through
vsto squeak through
  • Informal
56 4.2

Pass through something so it is not noticed or stopped

focuses on narrow survival by a small margin not easy passing
to get by
vsto squeak through
  • Informal
17 3.9

Avoid being caught or punished for breaking rules

is used for narrow success beyond avoiding detection or punishment
to squeak by
vsto squeak through
  • Informal
7 7.2

Manage to succeed or continue with only a small amount

also includes narrowly escaping from a bad outcome

Antonyms

to fail
∞ 1.0

Not succeed in doing something you wanted to do

to fall short
91 3.9

Fail to reach the level people expect

How Successful

clear
206 1.0
to get through
659 2.8
to squeak through
  • Informal
2 5.8
to fail
∞ 1.0

Surface Forms

squeak through infinitive
squeaked through past
squeaked through past participle
squeaking through present participle
squeaks through third person singular

Morphology

squeak + through

Here 'squeak' already carries the sense of a very narrow win/escape and 'through' denotes passing a threshold, so their combination directly yields 'to barely pass or succeed'. This composition follows standard verb + particle patterns and is readily derivable by a B1 learner who knows both constituent senses.

Etymology

Squeak through may come from the image of a small animal making a tiny squeak as it slips through a narrow hole, giving the sense of getting by at the last moment. So it means 'to narrowly escape or succeed'.