come alive
Idioms-
Also, come to life.
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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]
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Appear real or believable, as in It's really hard to make this prose come to life . Also see look alive .
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.
“Mother Mary” doesn’t truly come alive unless one is willing to engage with its dense and frequently dour text, which opens with patience.
From Salon • Apr. 24, 2026
Caravaggio, master of a lighting technique to make his subjects seem to come alive, has about 65 surviving known works worldwide, only three of which are portraits.
From BBC • Mar. 10, 2026
"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
And yet, the communities and ecosystems that come alive in Ward’s work make you want to be with her people and creatures.
From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 30, 2026
There must have been some seed he left, to cause a child’s vacant fairy-tale to come alive in that garden.
From "Absalom, Absalom!" by William Faulkner
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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.