Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *gʷem-
Proto-Indo-European *gʷémt
Proto-Germanic *kwemaną
Proto-West Germanic *kweman
Old English cuman
Middle English comen
English come
From Middle English comen, cumen, from Old English cuman, from Proto-West Germanic *kweman, from Proto-Germanic *kwemaną (“to come”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷémt (“to step; to arrive”), from *gʷem- (“to come, step”).
Cognates
Cognate from Proto-Germanic with Scots cum (“to come”), Yola come, coome, cum (“to come”), North Frisian kaame, kame, keem, kem, kum, kååme, käme (“to come”), Saterland Frisian kume, kuume (“to come”), West Frisian komme (“to come”), Alemannic German cha, cheemen, cheme, cho, chomu, chéeme (“to come”), Bavarian ckeman, kemma, kemman, khemen, kumma, kumman, kèmmin (“to come”), Central Franconian komme, kunn, kumme (“to come”), Cimbrian ken, khemmen, khèmman (“to come”), Dutch komen, kommen (“to come”), Dutch Low Saxon kåmen (“to come”), German and Luxembourgish kommen (“to come”), Low German kamen, kuemen (“to come”), Mòcheno kemmen (“to come”), Yiddish קימען (kimen), קומען (kumen, “to come”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål komme (“to come”), Elfdalian kumå (“to come”), Faroese and Icelandic koma (“to come; to arrive”), Jamtish kuma (“to come”), Norwegian Nynorsk koma, komma, komme, kåmmå, kåmå (“to come”), Swedish komma (“to come”), Crimean Gothic kommen (“to come”), Gothic 𐌵𐌹𐌼𐌰𐌽 (qiman, “to come”).
Cognate from Proto-Indo-European with Latin venio (“to come; to approach”), Greek βήμα (víma, “pace, step”), Albanian ngah, ngaj (“to hasten, run”), Latvian dzimt (“to be born”), Lithuanian gimti (“to be born”), Armenian եկ (ek, “the act of coming, arrival; income”), Avestan 𐬔𐬀𐬨 (gam, “to come, go”), Northern Kurdish gav (“step”), Persian گام (gâm, “step”), Tocharian A kum- (“to come”), Tocharian B käm- (“to come”), Sanskrit गम् (gam, “to come, go, move”).
Meanings
Used to indicate a point in time at or after which a stated event or situation occurs.
Come the final whistle, Mikel Arteta lay flabbergasted on the turf. 2012 November 10, Amy Lawrence, “Fulham's Mark Schwarzer saves late penalty in dramatic draw at Arsenal”, in The Guardian:
Come summer, we would all head off to the coast.
Leave it to settle for about three months and, come Christmas time, you'll have a delicious concoction to offer your guests.
She announced in April that come 10 February 2023, her songs would be featured in a romantic comedy titled It's All Coming Back To Me […] 2022 October 5, Beatriz Colon, “Celine Dion ushers in holiday season with exciting music news”, in Hello! Magazine:
Come retirement, their Social Security may turn out to be a lot less than they counted on.
"And a long sea voyage that starts at six o'clock come morning." 1932, Delos W. Lovelace, King Kong, published 1965, page 14:
Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *gʷem-
Proto-Indo-European *gʷémt
Proto-Germanic *kwemaną
Proto-West Germanic *kweman
Old English cuman
Middle English comen
English come
From Middle English comen, cumen, from Old English cuman, from Proto-West Germanic *kweman, from Proto-Germanic *kwemaną (“to come”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷémt (“to step; to arrive”), from *gʷem- (“to come, step”).
Cognates
Cognate from Proto-Germanic with Scots cum (“to come”), Yola come, coome, cum (“to come”), North Frisian kaame, kame, keem, kem, kum, kååme, käme (“to come”), Saterland Frisian kume, kuume (“to come”), West Frisian komme (“to come”), Alemannic German cha, cheemen, cheme, cho, chomu, chéeme (“to come”), Bavarian ckeman, kemma, kemman, khemen, kumma, kumman, kèmmin (“to come”), Central Franconian komme, kunn, kumme (“to come”), Cimbrian ken, khemmen, khèmman (“to come”), Dutch komen, kommen (“to come”), Dutch Low Saxon kåmen (“to come”), German and Luxembourgish kommen (“to come”), Low German kamen, kuemen (“to come”), Mòcheno kemmen (“to come”), Yiddish קימען (kimen), קומען (kumen, “to come”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål komme (“to come”), Elfdalian kumå (“to come”), Faroese and Icelandic koma (“to come; to arrive”), Jamtish kuma (“to come”), Norwegian Nynorsk koma, komma, komme, kåmmå, kåmå (“to come”), Swedish komma (“to come”), Crimean Gothic kommen (“to come”), Gothic 𐌵𐌹𐌼𐌰𐌽 (qiman, “to come”).
Cognate from Proto-Indo-European with Latin venio (“to come; to approach”), Greek βήμα (víma, “pace, step”), Albanian ngah, ngaj (“to hasten, run”), Latvian dzimt (“to be born”), Lithuanian gimti (“to be born”), Armenian եկ (ek, “the act of coming, arrival; income”), Avestan 𐬔𐬀𐬨 (gam, “to come, go”), Northern Kurdish gav (“step”), Persian گام (gâm, “step”), Tocharian A kum- (“to come”), Tocharian B käm- (“to come”), Sanskrit गम् (gam, “to come, go, move”).
Meanings
(dated, formal) An exclamation to express annoyance.
"Come, that will do," interrupted Joolby with an impatient growl; […] 1934, Ernest Bramah, The Bravo of London:
Come now! Things could be worse.
Come, come! Stop crying.
(dated, formal) An exclamation to express encouragement, or to precede a request.
Come then, pure hands, and bear the head
That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep,
And come, whatever loves to weep,
And hear the ritual of the dead. 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto XVIII”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 30:
Her. What wisdome stirs amongst you? Come Sir, now
I am for you againe: 'Pray you sit by vs,
And tell's a Tale. c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]:
Come, come! You can do it.
“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”. 1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] Ferguson, chapter I, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:
Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *gʷem-
Proto-Indo-European *gʷémt
Proto-Germanic *kwemaną
Proto-West Germanic *kweman
Old English cuman
Middle English comen
English come
From Middle English comen, cumen, from Old English cuman, from Proto-West Germanic *kweman, from Proto-Germanic *kwemaną (“to come”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷémt (“to step; to arrive”), from *gʷem- (“to come, step”).
Cognates
Cognate from Proto-Germanic with Scots cum (“to come”), Yola come, coome, cum (“to come”), North Frisian kaame, kame, keem, kem, kum, kååme, käme (“to come”), Saterland Frisian kume, kuume (“to come”), West Frisian komme (“to come”), Alemannic German cha, cheemen, cheme, cho, chomu, chéeme (“to come”), Bavarian ckeman, kemma, kemman, khemen, kumma, kumman, kèmmin (“to come”), Central Franconian komme, kunn, kumme (“to come”), Cimbrian ken, khemmen, khèmman (“to come”), Dutch komen, kommen (“to come”), Dutch Low Saxon kåmen (“to come”), German and Luxembourgish kommen (“to come”), Low German kamen, kuemen (“to come”), Mòcheno kemmen (“to come”), Yiddish קימען (kimen), קומען (kumen, “to come”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål komme (“to come”), Elfdalian kumå (“to come”), Faroese and Icelandic koma (“to come; to arrive”), Jamtish kuma (“to come”), Norwegian Nynorsk koma, komma, komme, kåmmå, kåmå (“to come”), Swedish komma (“to come”), Crimean Gothic kommen (“to come”), Gothic 𐌵𐌹𐌼𐌰𐌽 (qiman, “to come”).
Cognate from Proto-Indo-European with Latin venio (“to come; to approach”), Greek βήμα (víma, “pace, step”), Albanian ngah, ngaj (“to hasten, run”), Latvian dzimt (“to be born”), Lithuanian gimti (“to be born”), Armenian եկ (ek, “the act of coming, arrival; income”), Avestan 𐬔𐬀𐬨 (gam, “to come, go”), Northern Kurdish gav (“step”), Persian گام (gâm, “step”), Tocharian A kum- (“to come”), Tocharian B käm- (“to come”), Sanskrit गम् (gam, “to come, go, move”).
Meanings
(intransitive) To move nearer to the point of perspective.
Look, who comes yonder? c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]:
She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes the wrong way […]
Yet think not that I come to urge thy crimes, / I did not come to curse thee, Guinevere, […] 1859, Alfred Tennyson, “Guinevere”, in Idylls of the King, London: Edward Moxon & Co., […], →OCLC, page 253:
(intransitive) To move nearer to the point of perspective. ▸ To move toward the speaker.
Come one, come all. Step right up!
I called the dog, but she wouldn't come.
Stop dawdling and come here!
(intransitive) To move nearer to the point of perspective. ▸ To move toward the listener.
You should ask the doctor to come to your house.
Hold on, I'll come in a second.
(intransitive) To move nearer to the point of perspective. ▸ To move toward the object that is the focus of the sentence.
Hundreds of thousands of people come to Disneyland every year.
No-one can find Bertie Wooster when his aunts come to visit.
(in subordinate clauses and gerunds, intransitive) To move nearer to the point of perspective. ▸ To move toward 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.
(intransitive) To move nearer to the point of perspective. ▸ To move toward an unstated agent.
The butler should come when called.
(intransitive) To arrive.
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: […] 1667 June 22 (date written; Gregorian calendar), Samuel Pepys, Mynors Bright, transcriber, “June 13th, 1667”, in Henry B[enjamin] Wheatley, editor, The Diary of Samuel Pepys […], volume VI, London: George Bell & Sons […]; Cambridge: Deighton Bell & Co., published 1895, →OCLC, page 364:
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. 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter V, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:
So I'd have ate^([sic]) when me Dad had ate, sort of thing, I think, you know when he come home from work, I'd have waited for him, I wouldn't have said I wanted mine at four o'clock[…] 2013 January 11 [1997], David Bell, Gill Valentine, Consuming Geographies: We Are Where We Eat, Routledge, →ISBN, page 140:
(intransitive) To appear; to manifest itself; to cause a reaction by manifesting.
The news came as a shock.
Kathy and I had a teen-age girl to girl talk, about boys, John, and understanding Mom. I was gonna tell her about Phil but I held my mouth till tears came. 1965 January 4, Lou Sullivan, Diary:
The pain in his leg comes and goes.
(with an infinitive) To begin (to have an opinion or feeling).
She came to think of that country as her home.
We came to believe that he was not so innocent after all.
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. 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter III, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:
(with an infinitive) To do something by chance or unintentionally.
Could you tell me how the document came to be discovered?
(intransitive) To take a position relative to something else in a sequence.
Which letter comes before Y? Winter comes after autumn.
(intransitive, often, slang, vulgar) To achieve orgasm; to cum; to ejaculate.
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. 2004, Alan Hollinghurst, chapter 2, in The Line of Beauty […], London: Picador, →ISBN:
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. 2008, Philip Roth, Indignation:
Come in me!
She came after a few minutes.
(intransitive, of milk) To become butter by being churned.
when butter does refuse to come 1662 (indicated as 1663), [Samuel Butler], “[The First Part of Hudibras]”, in Hudibras. The First and Second Parts. […], London: […] John Martyn and Henry Herringman, […], published 1678; republished in A[lfred] R[ayney] Waller, editor, Hudibras: Written in the Time of the Late Wars, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: University Press, 1905, →OCLC:
(copulative, figuratively) To approach or reach 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.
(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.
(archaic, copulative) To become, to turn out to be (often in set phrases and certain collocations).
come loose
come clean
He saw a gnarled old woman vigorously scrubbing a very dirty boy, who squirmed under the rough usage and screwed up his eyes and mouth to keep out the soap. "Drat the boy," cried the old lady, wrathfully. "Stand still, do! Will he ever come clean?" 1910, The Poster, Poster Advertising Association, Notable Poster Illustrations, page 17:
come undone
come true
How come you thus estranged? c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Loues Labour’s Lost”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene ii]:
(intransitive) To be supplied, or made available; to exist.
A new sports car doesn't come cheap.
Our milkshakes come in vanilla, strawberry and chocolate flavours.
He's as tough as they come.
(slang) To carry through; to succeed in.
You can't come any tricks here.
(intransitive) To happen.
This kind of accident comes when you are careless.
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. 2014 June 14, “It's a gas”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8891:
(intransitive, with from or sometimes of) To have as an origin, originate. ▸ To have a certain social background.
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. 2011, Kate Gramich, chapter 3, in Kate Roberts, University of Wales Press, →ISBN, page 46:
(intransitive, with from or sometimes of) To have as an origin, originate. ▸ To be or have been a resident or native.
Where did you come from?
(intransitive, with from or sometimes of) To have as an origin, originate. ▸ To have been brought up by or employed by.
He comes from a disreputable legal firm.
She comes from a good family.
(intransitive, with from or sometimes of) To have as an origin, originate. ▸ To begin (at a certain location); to radiate or stem (from).
Where does this road come from?
The river comes from Bear Lake.
(intransitive, of grain) To germinate.
(informal, transitive) To pretend to be; to behave in the manner of; to assume the role of.
Ponds drew a chair to the table and seated himself and poured Mrs Dibble a gin, saying solemnly, "Now then, Mrs Dibble, what's it all about?" "I'm upholding my rights agen that woman that's been coming the high and mighty over me like I ain't got the right to say a word in me own business." 1950, Norman Lindsay, Dust or Polish?, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 157:
“Hush! hush! Mr. Sikes,” said the Jew, trembling; “don’t speak so loud!” / “None of your mistering,” replied the ruffian; “you always mean mischief when you come that. You know my name: out with it! I shan’t disgrace it when the time comes.” 1838, Boz [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], Oliver Twist; […], volume (please specify |volume=I, II, or III), London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC:
Don’t come the innocent victim. We all know who’s to blame here.
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. 1824, J. Johnson, Typographia:
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. 1842, F. Francillon, An Essay on Punctuation, page 9: