come to be

verb

To come about; to come into being

Ask AI about this wordChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

Meanings

verbcome to be (third-person singular simple present comes to be, present participle coming to be, simple past came to be, past participle come to be)

present singular third person comes to be · participle present coming to be · past came to be

  1. To come about; to come into being

    All naturally occurring dialects of any language have strong communicative value: That’s how they came to be.

    2025, Edward A. F. Gibson, “Preliminaries: Components of Language Structure” (chapter 2), in Syntax: A Cognitive Approach, MIT Press, →DOI, →ISBN, page 23

Synonyms & antonyms

Also see
come about
Cite this entry
APA

come to be. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/come%20to%20be

MLA

“come to be.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/come%20to%20be. Accessed November 5, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “come to be,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/come%20to%20be.

Source: come to be on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.