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

"If you look at the athletes France have, if we kick a little too far, or if there's an offload, they come alive," Tandy told the BBC.

From Barron's • Feb. 15, 2026

Read more: Is a new OpenAI deal what Amazon’s stock needs to finally come alive?

From MarketWatch • Dec. 30, 2025

What they don't have enough of is warriors who come alive when things are going awry.

From BBC • Nov. 20, 2025

In “Toy Story,” children’s playthings come alive and even kind of fly.

From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 18, 2025

They were getting the kind of superlative performance they had come to expect, and they had come alive.

From "Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, And A Dream" by H.G. Bissinger