Word.ws English Dictionary

came about

came about is the simple past of come about.

Meaning of come about

Verb

come about (third-person singular simple present comes about, present participle coming about, simple past came about, past participle come about)

  1. (intransitive) To come to pass; to develop; to occur; to take place; to happen; to exist.
    • We have to ask, how did this come about?
    Synonyms:
    come to pass
  2. (intransitive) To tack; to change tack; to maneuver the bow of a sailing vessel across the wind so that the wind changes from one side of the vessel to the other; to position a boat with respect to the wind after tacking. See also come to.
  3. (intransitive) To change; to come round.
    • The wind is come about.c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...

Questions about came about

What is came about the simple past of?
Came about is the simple past of come about.

Words near came about in the dictionary

  1. Camdyn
  2. came
  3. came a cropper
  4. came a gutser
  5. came a long way
  6. came about
  7. came across
  8. came across with
  9. came after
  10. came alive
  11. came aloft

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: came about (page history and authors); come about (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “came about.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/came_about. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.