come alive

Idioms  

1. Also, come to life.

2. Become vigorous or lively. For example, It took some fast rhythms to make the dancers come alive , or As soon as he mentioned ice cream, the children came to life . The adjective alive has been used in the sense of “vivacious” since the 1700s. Also, the variant originally (late 1600s) meant “to recover from a faint or apparent death.” [ Colloquial ; first half of 1900s]

3. Appear real or believable, as in It's really hard to make this prose come to life . Also see look alive .

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

come alive

“But I think what really makes that whole episode come alive is the costumes and the people. So the set falls back a little bit.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 19, 2026

Ms. Bridgers is exceptionally good at writing phrases that read slightly awkwardly on paper but come alive as music, and has an eye for the telling detail that carries a raft of associations.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 11, 2026

It's seeing your heroes come alive on screen and falling in love with unexpected new ones.

From BBC ● Jun. 21, 2026

Shares of companies that rode high and survived the dot-com bust — but were then relegated to the tech sector’s back ranks during the decades that followed — have suddenly come alive again.

From MarketWatch ● May 15, 2026

Away from him though, the woods come alive with animal sounds.

From "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins