come to oneself

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

1. idiomaticintransitiveTo gain consciousness or self-control.

   The patient invariably falls down in a swoon and is carried like dead to his hammock, where he is tightly lashed with cords. As they come to themselves, they writhe in agony, so that their hammocks rock violently to and fro.

   1911, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 10, page 63

   1 more example

   When I came to myself I was lying, not in the outer blackness of the Mohune vault, not on a floor of sand; but in a bed of sweet clean linen, and in a little whitewashed room, through the window of which the spring sunlight streamed.

   [1898], J[ohn] Meade Falkner, Moonfleet, London; Toronto, Ont.: Jonathan Cape, published 1934, →OCLC