Word.ws English Dictionary

came up

came up is the simple past of come up.

Meaning of come up

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly.
    • Unless anything comes up, I'll be there every day this week.
  2. (intransitive) To be revealed to have a certain value, quality, or status.
    • The movie didn't come up to our expectations.
  3. (intransitive) To come to attention and present oneself; to arrive or appear.
    • At some point in the conversation my name came up, and I readily agreed to their proposition.
  4. (intransitive) To appear (before a judge or court).
    • He came up before a judge and was fined a thousand dollars.
  5. (intransitive) To draw near in time.
    • The summer holidays are coming up.
  6. (intransitive) To approach a time or scheduled event.
    • We're coming up on the interview in the last half-hour of the program.

See all 16 meanings of come up

Questions about came up

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

Words near came up in the dictionary

  1. came to time
  2. came together
  3. came true
  4. came under
  5. came unhinged
  6. came up
  7. came up against
  8. came up and bit
  9. came up from behind
  10. came up roses
  11. came up short

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: came up (page history and authors); come up (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 up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/came_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.