come down

present singular third person comes down · participle present coming down · past came down

1. intransitiveTo descend, fall down, collapse.

   A tree came down and hit me on the head.

   5 more examples

   After a clap of thunder, down came the rain.

   Down you come this moment, you rapscallion!

   Haste ye, and go up to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all Egypt: come down unto me, tarry not.

   1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Genesis 45:9

   No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the veranda, smoking cigarettes, or otherwise his man would be there with a message to say that his master would shortly join me if I would kindly wait.

   1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC, page 46

   I'm feeling so alive, feeling so real / On a stormy night, the rain is coming down / Rain like never before / I've got some records on, some bottles of wine / On a stormy night, the rain is lashing down / And I'm waiting for her.

   1995, “Goldfinger”, performed by Ash

2. intransitiveTo be demolished.

   The damage sustained in the fire is so great that the whole building will have to come down.

3. intransitiveTo decrease.

   Real estate prices have come down since the peak of the boom.

4. intransitiveTo reach or release a decision.

   The decision in Doe v. Smith came down this morning.

   1 more example

   I can't guess which way the board will come down on the project.

5. intransitiveTo be passed through time.

   Much wisdom has come down in the form of proverbs.

6. idiomaticintransitiveTo return from an elevated state of consciousness (especially when drug-induced) or emotion.

   He finally came down from his post-bonus high.

   4 more examples

   Navarre is in superb control of his prose, distorting it more and more as the poppers mint Luc's mind, clarifying it as he comes down.

   1982 February 6, Edmund Carvale, “Recovering a Literary Legacy”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 28, page 8

   In the middle of the night, it feels alright / But then tomorrow morning / Ooh, ooh, then you come down

   1995, “Sorted For E’s and Wizz”, in Jarvis Cocker (lyrics), Different Class, performed by Pulp

   In 1967, a Shulgin compound called DOM enjoyed a brief vogue in Haight-Ashbury under the name STP, at doses several times larger than those at which Shulgin had found significant psychoactive effects, and emergency rooms saw a spike in the number of people coming in thinking they would never come down.

   2005 January 30, Drake Bennett, “Dr. Ecstasy”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   Britpop had revitalised rock, and an unprecedented explosion in dance music – sparked off by a second consecutive sunny and idyllic Glastonbury – transformed how Britain thought, listened, partied and came down afterwards.

   2015 June 28, “It was 20 years ago today: the year British dance music went wild”, in The Observer

7. UKimpersonalTo rain.

   It's coming down heavily now.

8. UKintransitiveTo graduate from university, especially an Oxbridge university.

   Raju had got a job with a law firm in Singapore after coming down from Oxford.

   2008, Preeta Samarasan, Evening is the Whole Day, Fourth Estate, page 24

9. Shortening of of come down the (pike, line, etc.) To be about to happen; to occur; to transpire.
10. intransitiveslangTo behave in a particular way.

    He's been coming down angry all day.