come

Etymology 1

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”), from *gʷem- (“to step”). cognates Cognate from Proto-Germanic with Scots cum (“to come”), Saterland Frisian kuume (“to come”), West Frisian komme (“to come”), Low German kamen (“to come”), Dutch komen (“to come”), German kommen (“to come”), Norwegian Bokmål and Danish komme (“to come”), Swedish komma (“to come”), Norwegian Nynorsk and Icelandic koma (“to come”). Cognate from PIE via Latin veniō (“come, arrive”) with many Romance language terms (e.g., French venir, Portuguese vir, Spanish venir), Lithuanian gimti (“to be born, come into the world, arrive”), with terms in Iranian languages (e.g. Avestan 𐬘𐬀𐬨𐬀𐬌𐬙𐬌 (jamaⁱti, “to go”)), via Sanskrit गच्छति (gácchati, “to go”) with many Indic language terms (e.g., Hindi गति (gati)). Cognate to English basis, from PIE via Ancient Greek.

verb

1. (intransitive) To move from further away to nearer to.
   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.
   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[…] 11 January 2013 [1997], David Bell, Gill Valentine, Consuming Geographies: We Are Where We Eat, Routledge, page 140
3. (intransitive) To appear, to manifest itself.
   The pain in his leg comes and goes.
4. (with an infinitive) 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.
5. (with an infinitive) To do something by chance, without intending to do it.
   Could you tell me how the document came to be discovered?
6. (intransitive) To take a position relative to something else in a sequence.
   Which letter comes before Y? Winter comes after autumn.
7. (intransitive, vulgar, slang) To achieve orgasm; to cum; to ejaculate.
   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
   He came after a few minutes.
   Come in me!
8. (intransitive, of milk) To become butter by being churned.
9. (copulative, figurative, 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.
10. (figurative, 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.
11. (copulative, fossil word) To become, to turn out to be.
    He was a dream come true.
12. (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.
    A new sports car doesn't come cheap.
13. (slang) To carry through; to succeed in.
    You can't come any tricks here.
14. (intransitive) 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. 2014-06-14, “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.
       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.
       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?
16. (intransitive, of grain) To germinate.
17. (transitive, informal) To pretend to be; to behave in the manner of.
    Don’t come the innocent victim. We all know who’s to blame here.

noun

1. (obsolete) Coming, arrival; approach.
   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
   When a man uses a condom during sex, he takes all of his come with him, preventing her from getting pregnant.
3. (vulgar, slang) Female ejaculatory discharge.

prep

1. 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.
   "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. November 10 2012, 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 […] 2022-10-05, Beatriz Colon, “Celine Dion ushers in holiday season with exciting music news”, in Hello! Magazine

intj

1. (dated or formal) An exclamation to express annoyance.
   Come come! Stop crying.
   Come now! You must eat it.
2. (dated or formal) An exclamation to express encouragement, or to precede a request.
   Come come! You can do it.
   Come now! It won't bite you.

Etymology 2

See comma.

noun

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