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 .

---

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

come alive

Ms. Smialek makes the dismal science come alive with a journalist’s fluidity.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 13, 2026

If I say that the songs from the new album didn’t come alive for me until the show, how does that strike you?

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 27, 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

I thought about the rubber rat and the tiny birds that had suddenly come alive when the wind blew.

From "The Titan's Curse" by Rick Riordan

Random Word

Spin the wheel and learn a new word!

---