making do

"The weekends would find me in an empty apartment, making do with the company of books."
I don't fully understand the structure of the latter part. Strikes me as atypical.

To make do with = To content oneself with

To "make do" is to work with whatever is available, especially if it's not really what you want or isn't really adequate to the task. You want to cook a nice Italian dinner, but the cupboards are bare, so you will have to make do with a can of Spaghetti-O's. You'd like to get out and have a social life, but all your friends are out of town, so you will have to content yourself, as Invité d'honneur puts it, with living vicariously through a book.

A related phrase is "It'll have to do", meaning "well, if that's all we have to work with, we'll have to figure out a way to make it be enough". You want to make your gravy from scratch, but you have no chicken stock or pan drippings to work with, so a can of cream of chicken soup will have to do as a base.

Sometimes people will also extend the phrase out to "This will do the trick" or "It'll have to do the job" -- perhaps that will make the meaning a little more clear. But "make do" and "have to do" are usually stand-alone phrases, and not necessarily shortened versions of those others -- they are just all related in meaning.

Another related phrase is "That will do", which means "that's adequate" or "that's enough". Whether it's said in a good or bad way depends ont he context -- when the farmer says "That'll do, pig" or Shrek says "That'll do, donkey", those were expressions of approval, whereas when my mother used to say "That'll do," in a sharp tone that meant "That's enough, not another word out of you!" ;)

lol Thanks for the elaborate explanation.

That'll teach you to ask, huh? ;)

Thanks Ariel

Going off on a tangent slightly, do the Americans ever say I could do with, as in 'I could do with a drink'? or do they only ever say I could use i.e, 'I could use a drink'?

<<Going off on a tangent slightly, do the Americans ever say I could do with, as in 'I could do with a drink'? or do they only ever say I could use i.e, 'I could use a drink>>

I myself, a born and bred yankee, constantly encounter the expression "I could use a drink" both in my mind and on my lips at just about any given moment of the day. Will that do?

¡cheers!