to come to grief
1
7.3
- phrasal verb
- /kʌm tu ɡrɪf/
- Informal
:
fracasarse
- The company came to grief after ignoring the safety warnings about their product.
- hunters come to grief
- so often come to grief
- one comes to grief
All must obey them or waste life and come to grief.
- All must obey them or waste life and come to grief.
- And against that backdrop, she goes on and says one of them, a mighty sorcerer and dragon Lord, the greatest of them all, came to grief here.
Examples
-
To Gram, the lesson to be learned was that some girls should marry young or come to grief as unwed mothers.
Fiction book (1995) -
How have you come to grief In such a place as this?
-
And you two will come to grief for it, eat.
-
I know how I came to grief.
-
- You will come to grief, young sir.
-
But every other time I have come to grief.
Fiction book (1996) -
But she had heard that Janice had come to grief, too.
Fiction book (1994) -
I don't know how many business deals I've seen come to grief--
-
Countries with vastly different political systems and decision-making processes all came to grief.
Academic text (1998) -
In the unlikely event that he made it over the Wasatch Mountains, he almost certainly would come to grief in the Southern Rockies.
Fiction book (1999)
Synonyms
1
9.8
To fail badly or have a sudden problem
Antonyms
How Serious
Surface Forms
Morphology
The construction transparently combines 'come to' (arrive at a state) with 'grief' (sorrow), so a learner who knows the words can infer reaching a bad or sorrowful state. However, the phrase is somewhat idiomatic—the specific sense of suffering misfortune or failure (not necessarily literal bereavement) and its typical usages are not fully predictable without exposure.
Etymology
The phrase come to grief comes from an older use of grief to mean serious harm or trouble, with come showing that the harm 'arrives'. Imagine a traveller who suddenly falls or is badly hurt and the trouble comes. They 'come to grief', so today the phrase means 'to have bad luck or fail'.