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to come to

to come to

311 3.8
Wake up after being unconscious
  • phrasal verb
  • /kʌm tu/
translation icon : recobrar el conocimiento
  • After the long day, he finally came to in bed, confused about how he got there.
  • a patient came to

And then I like kind of came to and it all stopped.

Examples

  • And then I like kind of came to and it all stopped.

  • Two daughters of Mau Mau freedom fighters came to the cathedral and offered inspirational tales.

    Academic text (1994)
  • Maybe he came to.

  • Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?

  • Case patients with moderate-to-severe diarrhea were enrolled when they came to a health clinic.

    Academic text (2015)
  • After falling off his bike, he slowly came to and realized he was lying on the ground.

  • She was unconscious for a few minutes but eventually came to and started looking around.

Synonyms

to revive
vsto come to
71 4.1

To make a person conscious again after fainting

occurs naturally when the person wakes without being helped
to come to oneself
vsto come to
1 7.3

Wake up and become calm after fainting or shock

is limited to simply becoming conscious again rather than calming emotions

How Conscious

to revive
71 4.1
to come to
311 3.8
to stir
75 1.0

Surface Forms

come to infinitive
coming to present participle
comes to third person singular
came to past
come to past participle

Morphology

come + to

The verb 'come' carries the meaning 'arrive at a state' and the particle/preposition 'to' marks the target, so 'come to (a realization)' can be interpreted as 'arrive at a realization' — a composition that a learner who knows the constituents can often infer. However, 'come to' is polysemous (e.g. 'regain consciousness', 'amount to') and the precise idiomatic usage with abstract nouns requires familiarity with the collocation, so it is not fully predictable in all contexts.

Etymology

Come to comes from the idea of a person 'coming back' to themselves after being out of it; when someone 'comes to' they move back into awareness, so it means 'to regain consciousness'.