come

From Middle English comen, cumen, from Old English coman, cuman (“to come, go, happen”), from Proto-Germanic *kwemaną (“to come”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷem- (“to step”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /kʌm/, [kʰɐm], enPR: kŭm

• Audio (UK)

  (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /kʌm/, [kʰʌm], enPR: kŭm

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌm
• Homophone: cum

come (third-person singular simple present comes, present participle coming, simple past came or (archaic) come, past participle come or (rare) comen)

1. (intransitive) To move from further away to nearer to.

   She’ll be coming ’round the mountain when she comes […]

   • (Can we date this quote?) William Shakespeare

     Look, who comes yonder?

   • (Can we date this quote?) Alfred Tennyson

     I did not come to curse thee.

   1. To move towards the speaker.

      I called the dog, but she wouldn't come.

      Stop dawdling and come here!

   2. To move towards the listener.

      Hold on, I'll come in a second.

      You should ask the doctor to come to your house.

   3. To move towards the object that is the focus of the sentence.

      No-one can find Bertie Wooster when his aunts come to visit.

      Hundreds of thousands of people come to Disneyland every year.

   4. (in subordinate clauses and gerunds) To move towards the agent or subject of the main clause.

      King Cnut couldn't stop the tide coming.

      He threw the boomerang, which came right back to him.

   5. To move towards an unstated agent.

      The butler should come when called.

2. (intransitive) To arrive.
   • 1667 Diary of Samuel Pepys (illustrating the present historic)

     Late at night comes Mr. Hudson, the cooper, my neighbour, and tells me that he come from Chatham this evening at five o'clock, and saw this afternoon "The Royal James," "Oake," and "London," burnt by the enemy with their fire-ships:

   • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 5, in The Celebrity:

     Then came a maid with hand-bag and shawls, and after her a tall young lady. She stood for a moment holding her skirt above the grimy steps, […] , and the light of the reflector fell full upon her.

3. (intransitive) To appear, to manifest itself.

   The pain in his leg comes and goes.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Samuel Butler, Hudibras:

     when butter does refuse to come [i.e. to form]

4. (intransitive) To take a position relative to something else in a sequence.

   Which letter comes before Y?   Winter comes after autumn.

5. (intransitive, vulgar, slang) To achieve orgasm; to cum; to ejaculate.
   • 2004, Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty, Bloomsbury, 2005, Chapter 2:

     Nick was more and more seriously absorbed, but then just before he came he had a brief vision of himself, as if the trees and bushes had rolled away and all the lights of London shone in on him: little Nick Guest from Barwick, Don and Dot Guest's boy, fucking a stranger in a Notting Hill garden at night.

   • 2008, Philip Roth, Indignation:

     The sheer unimaginableness of coming into her mouth — of coming into anything other than the air or a tissue or a dirty sock — was an allurement too stupendous for a novice to forswear.

   He came after a few minutes.

6. (copulative, figuratively, with close) To approach a state of being or accomplishment.

   They came very close to leaving on time.   His test scores came close to perfect.

   One of the screws came loose, and the skateboard fell apart.

   • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 3, in The Celebrity:

     Now all this was very fine, but not at all in keeping with the Celebrity's character as I had come to conceive it. The idea that adulation ever cloyed on him was ludicrous in itself. In fact I thought the whole story fishy, and came very near to saying so.

7. (figuratively, with to) To take a particular approach or point of view in regard to something.

   He came to SF literature a confirmed technophile, and nothing made him happier than to read a manuscript thick with imaginary gizmos and whatzits.

8. (copulative, archaic) To become, to turn out to be.

   He was a dream come true.

   • (Can we date this quote?) William Shakespeare

     How come you thus estranged?

9. (intransitive) To be supplied, or made available; to exist.

   He's as tough as they come.   Our milkshakes come in vanilla, strawberry and chocolate flavours.

10. (slang) To carry through; to succeed in.

    You can't come any tricks here.

11. (intransitive) Happen.

    This kind of accident comes when you are careless.

    • 2014 June 14, “It's a gas”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8891:

      But out of sight is out of mind. And that […] means that many old sewers have been neglected and are in dire need of repair. If that repair does not come in time, the result is noxious and potentially hazardous.

12. (intransitive, with from or sometimes of) To have as an origin, originate.
    1. To have a certain social background.
       • 2011, Kate Gramich, Kate Roberts, University of Wales Press, →ISBN, chapter 3, 46:

         While Kate Roberts came from a poor background and, later in life, in the post-Second World War period suffered from severe money shortages, in the early 1930s, she and her husband must have counted themselves relatively well off, particularly in comparison with their neighbours in Tonypandy.

    2. To be or have been a resident or native.

       Where did you come from?

    3. To have been brought up by or employed by.

       She comes from a good family.

       He comes from a disreputable legal firm.

    4. To begin (at a certain location); to radiate or stem (from).

       The river comes from Bear Lake.

       Where does this road come from?

13. (intransitive, of grain) To germinate.

In its general sense, come specifically marks motion towards the deictic centre, (whether explicitly stated or not). Its counterpart, usually referring to motion away from or not involving the deictic centre, is go. For example, the sentence "Come to the tree" implies contextually that the speaker is already at the tree — "Go to the tree" often implies that the speaker is elsewhere. Either the speaker or the listener can be the deictic centre — the sentences "I will go to you" and "I will come to you" are both valid, depending on the exact nuances of the context. When there is no clear speaker or listener, the deictic centre is usually the focus of the sentence or the topic of the piece of writing. "Millions of people came to America from Europe" would be used in an article about America, but "Millions of people went to America from Europe" would be used in an article about Europe.

When used with adverbs of location, come is usually paired with here or hither. In interrogatives, come usually indicates a question about source — "Where are you coming from?" — while go indicates a question about destination — "Where are you going?" or "Where are you going to?"

A few old texts use comen as the past participle. Also, in some dialects, like rural Scots and rural Midlands dialects, the form comen is still occasionally in use, so phrases like the following can still be encountered there — Sa thoo bist comen heyr to nim min 'orse frae mee, then? [sä ðuː bɪst cʊmn̩ hiər tə nɪm miːn ɔːrs frə miː | d̪ɛn] (so you have come here to steal my horse from me, then?).

Formerly the verb be was used as the auxiliary instead of have, for example, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.

The phrase "dream come true" is a set phrase; the verb "come" in the sense "become" is archaic outside of some set phrases like come about, come loose, come true and come undone.

The collocations come with and come along mean accompany, used as "Do you want to come with me?" and "Do you want to come along?" In the Midwestern American dialect, "come with" can occur without a following object, as in "Do you want to come with?" In this dialect, "with" can also be used in this way with some other verbs, such as "take with". Examples of this may be found in plays by Chicagoan David Mamet, such as American Buffalo.[1] This objectless use is not permissible in other dialects.

The meaning of to ejaculate is considered vulgar slang. Many style guides and editors recommend the spelling come for verb uses while strictly allowing the spelling cum for the noun. Both spellings are sometimes found in either the noun or verb sense, however. Others prefer to distinguish in formality, using come for any formal usage and cum only in slang, erotic or pornographic contexts.[2]

• leave, go, depart, exit, withdraw, retreat, flee

• cam'st
• kingdom come

come (uncountable)

1. (obsolete) Coming, arrival; approach.
   • 1869, RD Blackmoore, Lorna Doone, II:

     “If we count three before the come of thee, thwacked thou art, and must go to the women.”

2. (vulgar, slang) Semen
3. (vulgar, slang) Female ejaculatory discharge.

The meaning of semen or female ejaculatory discharge is considered vulgar slang. Many style guides and editors recommend the spelling come for verb uses while strictly allowing the spelling cum for the noun. Both spellings are sometimes found in either the noun or verb sense, however. Others prefer to distinguish in formality, using come for any formal usage and cum only in slang, erotic or pornographic contexts.[3]

• cum

come

1. Used to indicate an event, period, or change in state occurring after a present time.

   Leave it to settle for about three months and, come Christmas time, you'll have a delicious concoction to offer your guests.

   Come retirement, their Social Security may turn out to be a lot less than they counted on.

   • 2012 November 10, Amy Lawrence, “Fulham's Mark Schwarzer saves late penalty in dramatic draw at Arsenal”, in The Guardian‎:

     Come the final whistle, Mikel Arteta lay flabbergasted on the turf.

• Came is often used when both the indicated event, period or change in state occurred in the past.

come

1. An exclamation to express annoyance.

   Come come! Stop crying.  Come now! You must eat it.

2. An exclamation to express encouragement, or to precede a request.

   Come come! You can do it.  Come now! It won't bite you.

   • 1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] Ferguson, chapter I, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, OCLC 731476803:

     “I'm through with all pawn-games,” I laughed. “Come, let us have a game of lansquenet. Either I will take a farewell fall out of you or you will have your sevenfold revenge”.

See comma.

come (plural comes)

1. (typography, obsolete) Alternative form of comma in its medieval use as a middot ⟨·⟩ serving as a form of colon.
   • 1824, J. Johnson, Typographia:

     There be five manner of points and divisions most used among cunning men; the which if they be well used, make the sentence very light and easy to be understood, both to the reader and hearer: and they be these, virgil,—come,—parenthesis,—plain point,—interrogative.

   • 1842, F. Francillon, An Essay on Punctuation, page 9:

     Whoever introduced the several points, it seems that a full-point, a point called come, answering to our colon-point, a point called virgil answering to our comma-point, the parenthesis-points and interrogative-point, were used at the close of the fourteenth, or beginning of the fifteenth century.

• ECMO, MECO, meco-

come

1. third-person singular present indicative of comer

come

1. third-person singular present indicative of comer
2. second-person singular imperative of comer

From Vulgar Latin *quōmo (from Latin quōmodo) + et. Cognate to French comme. See also Spanish como/cómo and Catalan com.

• IPA^(key): [ˈkome]

• Audio

  (file)

come

1. how

   Come stai? ― How are you? (informal)

   Come sta? ― How are you? (formal)

2. as, like

   blu come il mare ― as blue as the sea

3. such as

• come mai
• come no
• come se

come

1. as soon as

   come arrivò… ― as soon as he arrived…

• come non detto

• come in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

• meco

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈkoː.me/, [ˈkoː.mɛ]

cōme

1. nominative neuter singular of cōmis
2. accusative neuter singular of cōmis
3. vocative neuter singular of cōmis

• come in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press

• IPA^(key): /ˈko.mi/
• Hyphenation: co‧me

come

1. Third-person singular (ele, ela, also used with tu and você^?) present indicative of comer
2. Second-person singular (tu) affirmative imperative of comer

• IPA^(key): /ˈkome/

come

1. third-person singular present indicative of comer
2. second-person singular present imperative of comer