Word.ws English Dictionary

came calling

came calling is the simple past of come calling.

Meaning of come calling

Verb

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

  1. (colloquial, figuratively) To make one's presence felt (due to large numbers, strength, qualities etc).
    • The stage came calling when a friend suggested he try out for a production of South Pacific. He got a part in the sailors' chorus and so began his acting career.2020 November 1, Alan Young, “Sean Connery obituary: From delivering milk in Fountainbridge to the definitive James Bond”, in The Scotsman
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see come, calling.
    • The cook Sicon and slave Getas reprise the earlier scene where they came calling to ask for materials and were sent packing.2014, Martin Revermann, The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy, page 219

Questions about came calling

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

Words near came calling in the dictionary

  1. came back to bite
  2. came back to haunt
  3. came before
  4. came between
  5. came by
  6. came calling
  7. came clean
  8. came down
  9. came down cats and dogs
  10. came down in stair rods
  11. came down on

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: came calling (page history and authors); come calling (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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