to come to terms
83
4.1
- phrasal verb
- /kʌm tə tɜrmz/
:
aceptar
- One way or another, North and South would have to come to terms with that.
- come to terms with the fact
- try to come to terms
- need to come to terms
And look, we were able to come to terms on the buyout.
- And look, we were able to come to terms on the buyout.
- And it's coming to terms and accepting who I am.
- The two men, who by this point hated each other, were unable to come to terms on transportation costs.
- But fairly quickly, they start realizing that they're not going to be able to come to terms.
- And, and our own physiology's ability to, to come to terms with things that fall far outside of our life experience.
- Those kind of failures will require a process of mourning and coming to terms with the thing that you've lost.
- So some really dark moments for you and did writing the book help sort of come to terms with the journey you've been on?
- He's like, yo, what you can do is to come to terms with that death anxiety in the following way.
- I'm sorry that you had that experience at Stanford and that it took so long for you to come to terms with that.
- But over the last few years maybe I've really come to terms with, I've had to accept my past and release it.
- Shelley Kagan has an entire course about this, about coming to terms with this inevitable fact about human existence.
- And so from the family's point of view, it's very hard to think of anything more painful to come to terms with.
- You know, I've come to come to terms with that and so can you.
Examples
-
Alone in the still of the night, he struggled to come to terms with his feelings.
Fiction book (1991) -
The two men, who by this point hated each other, were unable to come to terms on transportation costs.
-
The last question I will do how do I help people come to terms and come to accept themselves?
-
And, and so now is the time where you are forced to, to come to terms with the things you have in your life.
-
There are things you have to come to terms with up here.
-
Right now, all this is about, simply, is you coming to terms with your situation.
-
We came to terms that we could agree upon.
-
And besides, each of them had other things, their own problems, to come to terms with.
Fiction book (2002) -
Over the years, they had gradually come to terms with the idea that Tommy was probably dead.
Fiction book (2000) -
After months of struggle, she finally learned to come to terms with her anxiety.
Synonyms
76
4.1
To accept a difficult or unpleasant situation
35
3.0
Decide together after talking about the terms
30
5.5
Start to accept and deal with a difficult situation
27
5.8
To accept something unpleasant that you cannot change
3
5.4
To begin to understand and deal with a difficult subject or problem
1
3.1
Make people or groups agree after an argument
Talk about things fully to reach an agreement when people disagree
Antonyms
How Accepting
Surface Forms
Morphology
There is a clear compositional link: 'come' (arrive at a state) combined with 'terms' (conditions) can plausibly yield 'arrive at conditions' or 'reach an agreement', so the agreement sense is somewhat derivable. However the common use 'come to terms (with)' meaning 'accept or reconcile oneself' is a conventionalized, metaphorical extension (arriving at mental 'terms') that a B1 learner may not reliably infer without exposure, so the expression is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Come to terms may come from old agreements: think of come as 'walking to' and terms as the written conditions people meet to sign. So the picture of going to the list of conditions explains both senses — to 'reach an agreement' with others and to 'accept' a difficult fact yourself.