come

verb
/kʌm/UK/kʌm/US/kəm/

Etymology

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”).

  1. inherited from *gʷémt — “to step; to arrive
  2. inherited from *kwemaną — “to come
  3. inherited from *kweman
  4. inherited from cuman
  5. inherited from comen

Definitions

  1. To move nearer to the point of perspective.

    • She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes the wrong way […]
    • Look, who comes yonder?
    • Yet think not that I come to urge thy crimes, / I did not come to curse thee, Guinevere, […]
  2. 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: […]
    • 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.
    • 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[…]
  3. To appear

    To appear; to manifest itself; to cause a reaction by manifesting.

    • The pain in his leg comes and goes.
    • The news came as a shock.
  4. + 21 more definitions
    1. To begin (to have an opinion or feeling).

      • We came to believe that he was not so innocent after all.
      • She came to think of that country as her home.
    2. To do something by chance or unintentionally.

      • Could you tell me how the document came to be discovered?
    3. To take a position relative to something else in a sequence.

      • Which letter comes before Y? Winter comes after autumn.
    4. To achieve orgasm

      To achieve orgasm; to cum; to ejaculate.

      • She came after a few minutes.
      • Come in me!
    5. To become butter by being churned.

      • when butter does refuse to come
    6. 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.
    7. 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. To become, to turn out to be (often in set phrases and certain collocations).

      • Near-synonyms: become, get, go, turn, fall, grow, wax
      • come true
      • come about
    9. To be supplied, or made available

      To be supplied, or made available; to exist.

      • He's as tough as they come.
      • Our milkshakes come in vanilla, strawberry and chocolate flavours.
      • A new sports car doesn't come cheap.
    10. To carry through

      To carry through; to succeed in.

      • You can't come any tricks here.
    11. 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.
    12. To have as an origin, originate.

    13. To germinate.

    14. To pretend to be

      To pretend to be; to behave in the manner of; to assume the role of.

      • Don’t come the innocent victim. We all know who’s to blame here.
    15. Coming, arrival

      Coming, arrival; approach.

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

      • When a man uses a condom during sex, he takes all of his come with him, preventing her from getting pregnant.
    17. Female ejaculatory discharge.

    18. Used to indicate a point in time at or after which a stated event or situation occurs.

      • 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.
      • Come summer, we would all head off to the coast.
    19. An exclamation to express annoyance.

      • Come, come! Stop crying.
      • Come now! Things could be worse.
      • "Come, that will do," interrupted Joolby with an impatient growl; […]
    20. An exclamation to express encouragement, or to precede a request.

      • Come, come! You can do it.
      • Come now! It won't bite you.
      • Her. What wisdome stirs amongst you? Come Sir, now I am for you againe: 'Pray you sit by vs, And tell's a Tale.
    21. Alternative form of comma in its medieval use as a middot ⟨·⟩ serving as a form of colon.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at come. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01come02arrive03reach04thrust05lunge06attached07joined08join

A definitional loop anchored at come. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

8 hops · closes at come

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA