come and go
Idioms-
Arrive and depart, either briefly or repeatedly; go to and fro. Shakespeare had it in The Merry Wives of Windsor (2:2): “He may come and go between you both.” [Late 1300s]
-
Alternately appear and disappear, as in This rash is odd; it comes and goes . [Mid-1300s] Also see coming or going ; easy come, easy go .
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Fad budgeting methods with cute names come and go: zero-based, 50/30/20, envelope, and so forth.
From MarketWatch • May 14, 2026
But while other classics come and go and jockey for position, a reliable fixture among the top 10—for the past four polls and 34 years—has been “Tokyo Story” by Yasujirō Ozu.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 30, 2026
"He has huge experience and given everything you can possibly give. But it's football. Players come and go."
From BBC • Apr. 27, 2026
The studio-adjacent neighborhood she patrols has an eclectic mix of upscale houses and block-long stretches of apartment buildings, with people moving in and out and leaving possessions on the curb as they come and go.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 18, 2026
At the house of the Shaper, people come and go, solemn faced, treading softly, their heads bowed and their hands folded for fear of sending dreadful apparitions through his dreams.
From "Grendel" by John Gardner
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
