to have it coming
30
7.8
- idiom
- Informal
:
merecerlo
- John's careless mistakes on the project mean he has it coming for the criticism he will receive.
- Maybe you had it coming
- I guess I had it coming
- Yeah, I had it coming
We might actually say adults have it coming here, he says.
- We might actually say adults have it coming here, he says.
- So, you know, he kind of had it coming, right?
Examples
-
Oh, no, that guy had it coming to him!
-
Some might say that he had it coming to him.
-
So, you know, he kind of had it coming, right?
-
I thought he had it coming.
-
Maybe he had it coming.
-
I think they have it coming.
-
I had it coming to me.
-
To be honest, I probably have it coming.
Fiction book (2002) -
Well, I guess they had it coming.
Fiction book (1993) -
But I had it coming.
Academic text (2005)
Synonyms
13
6.7
To receive punishment or bad results for doing wrong
12
6.8
To have problems later because of something you did before
11
8.1
About to get into trouble because of something you did
8
6.4
To receive praise, criticism, or blame
To be punished for something you did wrong
Antonyms
How Blameworthy
Surface Forms
Morphology
The literal parts ('have' = experience/suffer, 'coming' = about to happen) allow a learner to infer that some outcome ('it') will soon happen to the person, so the sense of an upcoming negative event is partly recoverable. However, the specific meaning 'to deserve something bad' depends on pragmatic/idiomatic inference rather than direct composition of the words, so it is not fully predictable to a B1 learner.
Etymology
The idiom have it coming uses a simple picture: it is the bad thing and coming means it is on the way, so someone who has it coming is about to get what they deserve. So it means 'to deserve something bad'.