Word.ws English Dictionary

came to life

came to life is the simple past of come to life.

Meaning of come to life

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To become alive, to be given life; to be brought into existence.
    • We want to know exactly how the first cells came to life on earth.1999, Lee Smolin, New York Times, We All Came From Mars
  2. (idiomatic, intransitive) To appear as if alive.
    • The CGI-generated characters came to life through an incredible display of a cutting-edge 3D technology.
  3. (idiomatic, intransitive) To start to become energetic.
    • It was only after Yakubu sliced another chance into the side netting, a bad miss by the former Everton striker, that Norwich came to life.2011 October 29, Neil Johnston, “Norwich 3 - 3 Blackburn”, in BBC Sport

Questions about came to life

What is came to life the simple past of?
Came to life is the simple past of come to life.

Words near came to life in the dictionary

  1. came to blows
  2. came to fruition
  3. came to grief
  4. came to grips with
  5. came to Jesus
  6. came to life
  7. came to light
  8. came to mind
  9. came to naught
  10. came to nothing
  11. came to nought

Source and license

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