Definition of "come"

come¹

/kʌm/

verb
third-person singular simple present comes, present participle coming, simple past came or (now nonstandard) come, past participle come or (rare) comen
1. (intransitive) To move from further away to nearer to.
  Quotations
  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, [Act II, scene i]
  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., […], page 253
  1. To move towards the speaker.
  2. To move towards the listener.
  3. To move towards the object that is the focus of the sentence.
  4. (in subordinate clauses and gerunds) To move towards the agent or subject of the main clause.
  5. To move towards an unstated agent.
2. (intransitive) To arrive.
  Quotations
  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: […]This passage uses the historical present tense.
  1667 June 23 (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, 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.
  So I'd have ate 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 , David Bell, Gill Valentine, Consuming Geographies: We Are Where We Eat‎, Routledge, page 140
3. (intransitive) To appear, to manifest itself.
  Quotations
  when butter does refuse to come [i.e., to form]
  1662, [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: University Press, 1905
4. (with an infinitive) To begin to have an opinion or feeling.
5. (with an infinitive) To do something by chance, without intending to do it.
6. (intransitive) To take a position relative to something else in a sequence.
7. (intransitive, vulgar, slang) To achieve orgasm; to cum; to ejaculate.
  Quotations
  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 […], 1st US edition, New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury Publishing
  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
8. (intransitive, of milk) To become butter by being churned.
9. (copulative, figuratively, with close) To approach a state of being or accomplishment.
  Quotations
  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.
10. (figuratively, with to) To take a particular approach or point of view in regard to something.
11. (copulative, fossil word) To become, to turn out to be.
  Quotations
  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, [Act V, scene ii]
  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
12. (intransitive) To be supplied, or made available; to exist.
13. (slang) To carry through; to succeed in.
14. (intransitive) Happen.
  Quotations
  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
15. (intransitive, with from or sometimes of) To have as an origin, originate.
  1. To have a certain social background.
    Quotations
    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, page 46
  2. To be or have been a resident or native.
  3. To have been brought up by or employed by.
  4. To begin (at a certain location); to radiate or stem (from).
16. (intransitive, of grain) To germinate.
17. (transitive, informal) To pretend to be; to behave in the manner of.
  Quotations
  “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; or, The Parish Boy’s Progress. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I, II, or III), London: Richard Bentley, […]
noun
uncountable
1. (obsolete) Coming, arrival; approach.
  Quotations
  “If we count three before the come of thee, thwacked thou art, and must go to the women.”
  1869, RD Blackmoore, Lorna Doone, section II
2. (vulgar, slang) Semen
3. (vulgar, slang) Female ejaculatory discharge.
preposition
1. Used to indicate a point in time at or after which a stated event or situation occurs.
  Quotations
  "And a long sea voyage that starts at six o'clock come morning."
  1932, Delos W. Lovelace, King Kong, published 1965, page 14
  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
  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
interjection
1. (dated or formal) An exclamation to express annoyance.
2. (dated or formal) An exclamation to express encouragement, or to precede a request.
  Quotations
  Her. What wisdome stirs amongst you? Come Sir, nowI 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, [Act II, scene i]
  Come then, pure hands, and bear the head⁠That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep,⁠And come, whatever loves to weep,And hear the ritual of the dead.
  1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], canto XVIII, page 30
  “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

come²

noun
plural comes
1. (typography, obsolete) Alternative form of comma in its medieval use as a middot ⟨·⟩ serving as a form of colon.
  Quotations
  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

Definition of "come"

come1

verb

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noun

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preposition

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interjection

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come2

noun

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come¹

come²