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

But Maine is also home to charming hotels and harbor towns with seafood restaurants and seaside promenades that come alive in warm weather.

From The Wall Street Journal • May 20, 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

“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

This,” he adds, meaning the magic hour, “is where you really come alive: ‘The night’s ahead of us — this is gonna be amazing.’

From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 23, 2026

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