come to

British  

verb

1. to regain consciousness or return to one's normal state

2. (adverb) nautical to slow a vessel or bring her to a stop

3. (preposition) to amount to (a sum of money)

   your bill comes to four pounds

4. (preposition) to arrive at (a certain state)

   what is the world coming to?

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come to Idioms  

1. Recover consciousness, as in She fainted but quickly came to . [Second half of 1500s]

2. Arrive at, learn, as in I came to see that Tom had been right all along . [c. 1700]

3. See amount to , def. 2.

4. See when it comes to .

5. Stop a sailboat or other vessel by bringing the bow into the wind or dropping anchor, as in “The gale having gone over, we came to” (Richard Dana, Two Years Before the Mast , 1840). [Early 1700s] Also see the subsequent entries beginning with come to .

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

come to

"It was important that the World Athletics Championships should come to Africa when we had the right host, the right bid and the right circumstances. Nairobi has demonstrated emphatically that this is their moment."

From BBC ● Sep. 15, 2026

Specifically, I make what I have come to call my “stewy mushrooms.”

From Salon ● Sep. 14, 2026

The droughts might come to an end this year.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 14, 2026

“The closer we come to a controlled asset, the higher the demand will be in the longer term,” he said.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 14, 2026

A rather worried-looking policeman did come to the house later that same evening to question Mutti about the elephant we were keeping in our garden.

From "An Elephant in the Garden" by Michael Morpurgo

Related Words

• amount
• consumption
• cost
• disbursement
• expense
• figure
• investment
• outlay
• output
• price
• rate
• spending
• value