come out of the woodwork

present singular third person comes out of the woodwork · participle present coming out of the woodwork · past came out of the woodwork

1. derogatoryidiomaticTo appear or emerge unexpectedly or inexplicably, frequently in large numbers or quantity.

   He won the lottery last year and he has had old "friends" and distant relatives coming out of the woodwork ever since.

   4 more examples

   [...] 90-day wonders [...] were kicked around by harassed Regulars who were [...] just too busy to take time to spare the feelings of those strange creatures who came out of the woodwork and wanted the privileges of officers, without being fully prepared to do the work of officers.

   1947 May, Colonel S. Legree, “We Must Get Together”, in Infantry Journal, volume 60, number 5, page 26

   Would-be informants came crawling out of the woodwork, drawn to McCarthy as moths to light, each peddling a new version of Lattimore's evil deeds.

   1992, Robert P. Newman, chapter 0, in Owen Lattimore and the “Loss” of China, page 227

   And suddenly they came out of the woodwork. I don't actually know what that expression means. What come out of the woodwork? Cockroaches maybe. Mice?

   2006, John Marsden, Circle of Flight: The Ellie Chronicles: 3, unnumbered page

   With the fall of the fascist regime, Italy was virtually overrun by several political parties who came out of the woodwork to fill in the vacuum.

   2012, Enzo Centofanti, chapter 0, in Out of Africa and into America: The Odyssey of Italians in East Africa, page 136

   Synonyms: crawl out of the woodwork, bring out of the woodwork, pull out of the woodwork · Antonyms: blend into the woodwork